The Lost is Found
by TheFirePhoenix4
Summary: While on a simple mission, Ezra senses something in an unknown person and is intruiged to find out who and what it is. (On temporary hold until further notice)
1. Chapter 1: The Mission

**Hello reader! This is my first creation on here, so please leave constructive criticism on here for me to help me get better. I hope you enjoy this.**

**Disclaimer: I don't own Star Wars, only the characters I create for this story. Enjoy!**

**???'s POV**

"Grrraaahhhhh!!!!" Was all I could let out a I was being electrocuted, eyelids crushed together, teeth gritted, and fists clenched together.

I was locked into a torture table with no escape possible and was being pushed to my breaking point.

I was very close to losing consciousness.

"Enough." the dark cloaked monster said from the shadows of the room in his low, robotic voice.

Right then, the jolting bolts stopped and relief and anger set in.

"Use your pain to fuel your anger and hatred. They will grant you true power." it said.

"Yes... my master." was all I could reply before fully blacking out.

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**Two Years Later On Lothal... **

"Alright crew, you all know the drill. Zeb, Sabine, you two take out the guards around the crates. Ezra, you and I will secure the crates and then we all grab them and take them back to the Ghost, where Hera will be ready to pick us up. Intelligence says there are 4 crates and they have some speeder bikes sitting there, so we should be able to steal those to bring the cargo back to the Ghost." Kanan announces to the crew, who were all sitting around the holotable on the Ghost.

He was right, they'd done missions like this a million times.

It was textbook work for the crew.

But for Ezra, something was different about this mission. Something he couldn't put words to.

Kanan sensed Ezra's confusion and walked over to him.

"Hey kid, you alright?" He said.

"Yeah. Hey, can I talk to you in private real quick?" Ezra asked.

Kanan was a little confused, but responded, "Sure, make it quick. We got a mission to do."

They then walked to Kanan's room and shut the door.

"Alright Ezra, what's bothering you?" Kanan said.

Ezra responded, "I sense that we're going to meet someone on this mission... someone force sensitive."

"Do you think it's an Inquisitor?" Kanan asked, ready to shut the mission down right there.

"I don't think so. Something's different about this one. They feel lost and alone." Ezra told him, kind of confused with the way this person felt through the force.

"Well, whatever it is, be careful. We don't know what this is, so we need to take caution on this one," Kanan told him, putting his hand on his shoulder.

"Come on, we have to get this mission done fast."

And even though both of them were a little wary of what this presence was, they walked out of the Ghost and headed with their crew off to their mission.

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"Alright, let's make this quick. Zeb, Sabine, go get'em." Kanan spoke through his commlink.

Zeb and Sabine did their usual thing, making quick work of the few buckethead guards there, shattering each of their skulls in the process, making an opening for Ezra and Kanan to secure the cargo.

Suddenly, Ezra stopped for a second, " Wait a second. Kanan, you said there would be 4 crates. There's only 3."

Just then, he froze in place.

He felt the presence, the presence he felt before the mission.

Just then, he heard one of the speeders start up and looked over in time to see someone in all black and a painted Mandolorian helmet on one of the speeder bikes.

"Thanks for doing the dirty work for me!" they yelled over his shoulder before speeding off.

"You guys take these crates back to Hera, I'll get that one back." Kanan said as he ran over to one of the bikes and sped off after the crate thief.

"Let's hope he gets that crate back without killing himself or the other person," Zeb said, chuckling.

"Alright, you heard Kanan. Let's move." Sabine said to the two.

While Sabine and Zeb we're both hooking up their crates to the bikes, Ezra was still frozen staring off at where Kanan and the thief took off from.

It was like he was entranced.

He was so entranced that he didn't realize that Sabine had walked up to him until she put her hand on his shoulder, shaking him a little, snapping him back into reality.

"You alright Ezra?" She said with a look of concern on her face.

This wasn't something normal and it concerned her a little.

He shook his head a little and quickly responded, "Yeah, sorry. I just... there's something off about whoever that was."

"Well, Kanan's after him, so I wouldn't worry too much. Come on, we have to get these back to Hera before they wake up." She mentioned, waving to the slightly moving troopers.

"You're right. Let's go." Ezra responded after a second of silence while staring off where both Kanan and the person took off.

While he was setting up his bike to head back to Hera, he couldn't get his mind off that person.

He could've sworn that person was force sensitive.

**Thank you for reading the first chapter of this story. I will be coming out with a second one in a few days. Please leave a comment if you have suggestions for the story. I'll see you in the next one.**


	2. Chapter 2: The Confronatation

**Hello reader! Thanks for coming back. I know some of these chapters will be rough but I appreciate you coming back so I can continue this story. As always, constructive criticism is accepted. And now to Chapter 2.**

This was starting to seem familiar to Kanan.

It was like deja vu for him, having done this before only one time, when they met Ezra.

It was kind of amusing for him to see that in this situation.

They were even heading down the long streets out of Lothal's capital.

The only difference was this person he was chasing wasn't an inexperienced pilot of bikes, this person could ride very well.

Too bad he seemed to forget that these bikes had guns on them, so when the person made a slight mistake and oprned up a shot to the back, he pulled the trigger and the laser struck the back of the bike, sending the bike, the cargo, and the person of the highway and into the tall Lothal grass.

The person landed hard on their back after flying through the air for a few seconds, grunting in pain and gasping for some air after getting the wind knocked out of him, but it only took a few seconds for them to recover and stand up.

Kanan has just pulled off of the highway and parked his bike near the unknown character and dismounted.

Kanan took a moment to study the person.

The person was about the size of a teenager but a bit bulkier and taller.

He was wearing a black jacket and black pants **(picture like one of Starkiller's outfits from The Force Unleashed where he wore the Imperial jacket and black pants)**.

He was wearing a Mandolorian helmet that was all white on the top with some some green swirls and plain bescar on the cheeks, black on the ear pieces and outer sides of the helmet, and some lighter green fangs on his helmet **(I will post the helmet as the cover image when I finish the concept completely so you can have a visual to fully understand the description)**.

"Not bad kid. You have some skill. Too bad it was all for not, because that crate is coming with me." Kanan said, not surprised when the kid wouldn't back down.

"I don't think that's going to happen, sorry. This crate belongs to me." He said, fire in his voice while pulling the crate behind him.

Kanan respected this kid's fire and him not willing to back down, but that didn't mean that he would get to keep his important cargo.

Just then, Kanan sensed something. It made him think about what Ezra had told him way back on the Ghost, "I sense we're going to meet someone on this mission... someone force sensitive," echoed through Kanan's mind as he looked over to the teenager protecting "his" cargo.

It then finally made sense to Kanan after all that time.

Suddenly, Kanan force pulled the crate towards him and got about halfway before it suddenly stopped.

It was then that Kanan saw the helmeted teen's arm outstretched towards the crate, using his power to try and pull it back from Kanan.

"So it's true. You are force sensitive." Kanan yelled towards the teen, not letting up.

The teen didn't respond, too focused on not letting go of the crate.

With all the focus he put into it, the teen eventually started slowly pulling the crate closer to himself, internally shocking Kanan.

Kanan could feel the anger starting to come out of the teen, probably because he had never been truly taught how the force worked.

Suddenly, they both heard the recognizable low cry of one specific ship: a Tie Fighter closing in on them.

They both then looked towards the fast approaching ship as it took a shot at the two, flinging both of them and the crate to the side and once again knocking the wind out of the teen.

They both stood after a few seconds, prepping themselves as the ship turned around to pass again.

Right before the Tie got a chance to sweep them off their feet once again, there were a couple of lasers shot from a passing ship, hitting and blowing up the Tie.

It was the Ghost, glidding right over the pair and landing nearby.

The bay door opened and Ezra was there waving towards Kanan to come on.

Kanan looked towards the teen and asked him, "Do you want to come? Or do you want to get blown to bits by the next Tie?"

The teen took a second but responded, " I guess I feel like living today," and they both ran towards the Ghost, the teen pushing the crate to the ship.

As Kanan boarded the ship with the teen, he looked over to Kanan and had a lot of "Are you sure about this?" on his face.

Kanan responded to the look with, " I'm not sure, be it he is force sensitive so I wanted to give him the same chance I gave you."

Ezra nodded his head towards his master and closed the bay door after the two.

The ship lifted off immediately and within a few seconds was already in space.

At that moment, the rest of the crew headed towards the bay to see what was going on.

Zeb came down the ladder, followed closely by Sabine and Hera.

The moment they all got down there, they all had gotten dow there, Zeb immediately said, " Uh, Kanan, who's this?" which was followed by Sabine telling him, "This was the guy who tried to steal our cargo."

"Alright you two. So, what's your name?" Kanan asked the teen.

The teen took a second to answer, "The name is Riley, and for your information, this is my crate," as he looked over at the two.

Riley then opened the crate and started to pull something out of it: a set of unpainted Mandolorian armor.

"Hey! That armor doesn't belong to you!" Sabine jumped to say.

Riley immediately looked at her and took off his helmet to reveal a tan face with green eyes and blonde hair in a similar fashion of Jai Kell's from season 1 of the show but to the left.

"Are you so sure about that?" he asked her, to which Sabine stood kind of shocked at the responded.

"Ok, where's your family?" Kanan asked Riley.

And that's where Riley immediately dimmed his attitude the moment he said it.

"I... don't have any family." he told them, head down.

"Are your parents dead?" Ezra asked him.

Riley looked up towards him and said, "I don't know, I never saw them."

"Where are you from? Where's your home?" Sabine asked him, wanting him to say it.

"My home planet is Mandolorian. I don't have a true home anywhere really." He responded to her.

She assumed so, with the way he acted towards the crew, but it didn't change her surprise.

"How'd you get all the way to Lothal if you're from Mandolorian?" Ezra asked him.

"That's a touchy subject I don't to get into with strangers. I don't really like talking about my past either way." He responded, to which Kanan and Ezra could sense he was hiding a little more than he let off.

"So, you're force sensitive huh. You look quite atuned to the the force for someone at your age. Do you or did you have a master?" Kanan asked, to which Riley stood frozen towards that statement.

Suddenly, Ezra felt a very familiar felling, a warning of trouble: the cold.

In Riley's mind, he could see flashes of his training: constant torture, beatings, being blasted with electricity and being taught in the ways of the dark side, and the constant robotic breathing of that dark monster he had to call a master.

He remembered all the pain, all the anger, and especially all the hate.

What had been eating at him for so long finally was released, just for a second.

Just then, all of those feelings washed away and he woke up in the floor, surrounded by the crew with Hera now who had come from the pilot seat to tell them they were now in hyperspace, all of them with a look of concern on their faces.

He immediately sat up with a quick jolt, and was met with a hand on his shoulder, the hand of Kanan.

"Are you alright?" Kanan said.

"There's something I need to tell you two Jedi." He said in a weak voice.

**Aw. Cliffhanger. Yeah, I know. Boo me. Oh well, I hope you enjoyed this new part. It took me way longer to write than it should've, but I finally got it out. I will have the next chapter out soon, so be on the lookout. As always, constructive criticism is appreciated. I'll have the helmet design up soon, I just need to make the final design and it will be up. Alright, see you next time!**


	3. Chapter 3: The Story

**Hello reader! Sorry for the wait in between Chapters. It takes me a while to write all of these chapters. Anyways, happy to have you here and hope you enjoy! And now we roll right back into the story started from last chapter.**

**Disclaimer: I don't own Star Wars, only my created characters.**

"I need to talk to these two in particular." He said, pointing to Ezra and Kanan.

The teen looked completely shaken to his core when he said that, so no one questioned him.

Everyone left the room but Ezra, Kanan, and Riley.

Now that everyone had left the room, Riley was ready to talk.

"Ok, before I say anything, I need you two to promise me that you'll here me through to the end before doing anything." Riley said.

He had a certain tone of fear in his voice that told Kanan that something was off.

"Alright, we promise." Kanan said, kind of wary.

There was a moment of tension in the air that felt like it could crush someone like a can.

Riley took a deep breath and finally spoke, "Alright, I was born on the planet Mandalore to some former Deathwatch Mandolorians,"

In Kanan's mind, he thought, "What does that have to do with anything?"

"I don't remember my parents well because of some very troubling things surrounding my childhood. I was kidnapped from my home at around 7 and was taken to be trained in the Imperial Academy, which they soon found my talents to be a little more than luck. They found out I was force sensitive and were going to kill me, but they didn't. Instead, they took me to become an Inquisitor. I've spent the last 7 years of my life being tortured and beaten. Then, for a short while, I did what Inquisitors do: hunt jedi. On my first mission, I was shot out of the sky on Lothal and crashed into the mountains not far from the city. Those monsters probably thought I died, so no one ever came for me. I almost contacted them, but then I thought, "I'm finally free." Now, there's no more pain and suffering. I finally could live a life of freedom."

"So you were an Inquisitor and left?" Ezra asked, believing that to be imposible.

"Yes." Riley replied.

"So what happened earlier when you passed out?" Kanan asked.

"Even though I'm no longer an Inquisitor, I still suffer from PTSD from those 7 years. I still have so much anger, pain, and rage built up inside of me from all the things I went through. I have learned to control it, but if certain things trigger the PTSD, I lose all control of myself. That was one of those moments." Riley explained.

"So that's why your eyes turned yellow and then went back to normal before you passed out." Kanan said, intrigued by this info.

"Alright Riley, I need to talk to the crew real quick. Ezra can keep you company while I'm gone." Kanan told him and left the room.

Riley and Ezra sat in silence for a moment before Ezra spoke, "So, you were an Inquisitor for 7 years and at the first chance to leave you took it. Why?"

"There was nothing for me there. It was nothing but hate, anger, and pain. There is nothing worse in the Galaxy than having to live that life. I will do anything to stay away from that life and I'll do anything to keep people away from that life." Riley told him.

Ezra thought for a second, " Do you know what happened to your parents?"

"I... don't truly know. The last time I saw them, I was 6 and they left to go deal with a small resistance. They never came home. I can only assume they're dead now." Riley told him, sadness expressed on his face.

"What did you do for the 3 years after?" Ezra asked him.

"I lived on the steeets. I did anything I could survive. Whatever it took." Riley told him.

"Well, it looks like we have a lot in common," Ezra said, to which Riley responded with a confused and and a little shock.

"I lost my parents at a young age as well, though I found out they died not too long ago. I also lived on the streets for a long period of my life until I met these guys." He said, pointing behind him to the door that his friends left out of.

"At least someone understands the pain of losing everything." Riley said, holding his hand out.

Ezra did the same and they shook.

"Ezra." Ezra said.

"Riley." Riley replied.

"Alright Riley, I'm gonna go. You can chill in here if you want." Ezra told him.

"Ok. Thank you Ezra." Riley replied, and with that, Ezra left the room.

Since Riley really had nothing else to do, he decided now would be a good time to meditate, and he did just that, closing his eyes, and becoming one with the force as the sounds of a beach filled his thoughts.

**Outside the Room...**

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Ezra walked out of the room feeling a mutual understanding with Riley, however, he walked into a heated arguement when he left the room between the crew.

"If this boy was an Inquisitor, he can't be trusted!" Zeb yelled.

"Give him a chance Zeb." Hera told him.

"Kanan, you've fought those Inquisitors. You know what they are capable of. What makes you think this kid won't just kill us right away?" Zeb asked Kanan.

"I can sense his feelings. He is not pure evil. I know I can help him." Kanan said.

"If he wanted to kill us, he already would've anyways." Sabine said.

"He may just be like Ezra as far as we can tell." Hera said.

"If I may," Ezra spoke as he injected himself into the conversation, to which everyone turned their heads to the boy, "I've already talked to him. He is just like me. He lost his family at a young age like me, he lived on the streets before being captured somewhat like me, and after all of what he's been through, he just wants to be part of a family. He has no one left to go to. I say we help him."

"I agree." Kanan said.

"I agree, let's give him a chance." Hera said.

"He's Mando, so I'll give him a shot." Sabine said.

"Zeb?" Ezra said, as everyone looked towards the Lasat.

He grumbled a little bit finally said, " Fine, but I don't want to hear it if he turns out to be evil.

"Alright, it's settled; he's staying." Hera said.

"Great, I'll let him know." Kanan said, and turned towards the door while everyone else but Ezra walked away.

"Master, when I spoke to him, he told me about his past. He's exactly like I was when you guys first found me." Ezra told him.

"Alright. You and me can work with him. We might be able to give him a place to stay." Kanan told his apprentice.

"You must be cautious though, he told me he still struggles with his emotions spiraling out of control, obviously because of what he used to be."

"Alright, I'll make sure to keep that in mind." Kanan told him.

And after that, the two both walked into the room together to the broken boy to help him find his place in the universe and in the force.

**Thank you for reading! I know it was a long wait, but it is finally finished. I hope you enjoyed this ongoing story. As always, constructive criticism is always wanted to help the story grow. And as always, I'll see you in the next one!**


	4. Chapter4:Friendships and Questions

**Hello reader. Welcome back. I hope you've enjoyed the story up to this point. I'll explain the absence at the bottom if you're interested. Anyways, less talking,more reading. Onto Chapter 4.**

**Disclaimer: I don't own Star Wars, only my created characters.**

It had been two weeks since Riley had joined the crew and it seemed to be going well.

Riley and Ezra bonded really well and we're already pretty close friends.

Riley talked to Sabine a lot trying to learn more about Mandalore as he never really got to go home ever; the two bonded pretty well over this.

Zeb didn't really like Riley, but Riley gave him space and didn't bother him too much, which Zeb appreciated.

Hera was impressed on how much Riley knew about ships and piloting.

He had become one of the key mechanics on the ship when it needed any.

Kanan has been impressed at how well the kid could fight with a lightsaber but was weary of the kid's past affecting his fighting.

He had mastered two different forms and was a pretty good swordsman, he just didn't have a lightsaber to fight with.

His biggest issue was that he used emotions while he fought, which was not the Jedi way, but something very fixable.

His force powers were his only real weakness because he never was taught how to use them, but he wasn't bad for a beginner.

This boy was also an excellent shot with any gun you gave him, never missing a single shot he took.

The boy was a lefty but could shoot very well with both hands.

All in all, he was a very solid fighter and was definitely a big project to work on, but he could become something special with a good teacher.

As Kanan finished up his notes on the boy, Hera walked into the cockpit.

"What'cha doing hun?" She said at the sight of her love.

"Oh, nothing. Just writing some things down about Riley." He said to her.

"Well, he has been a big help in keeping the Ghost running at peak lately." She remarked.

"Yeah, I'm just ... I'm not sure if I fully trust him yet." Kanan said.

"It did take you a little to trust Ezra. It's pretty much like having two of him." She said.

He smirked, "You say that like it's a good thing."

"Sometimes it is." She chuckled.

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As Riley sat in his room, he thought about all that had happened in the past few weeks of his life.

He went from living on his own and having nothing to having a something to live for.

It was nice for him to have something to live for again.

He started to sit on his knees on the floor and ponder the last 3 weeks in his mind, leaving him with questions only one person he knew could answer.

He started to meditate on the past and the future, trying to make sense of some of his questions, the biggest being, "How did I get here from where I am?"

As he meditated, he entered into a vision-like state to which he opened his eyes to find nothing but space around him.

He then heard a voice speak to him, the same one as every other time that in his mind had become a sort of friend and teacher to him.

It spoke to him, "Seek more answers to your questions you do?"

"Yes. I want to know why I'm here. I have done so many terrible things yet I have been given another chance to live on." Riley said.

"Hmm," The voice responded, "Clouded more that's ever the force is. Impossible it is tell you why the force has lead your path to here. Assume, you must, that the force has a plan for you as it does for all of us."

Riley sat there and thought about this response pondered if this was a good enough answer.

It was not the answer he had wanted to hear, but it was the answer he had received and he must be able to deal with that.

"Thank you Master Yoda. What shall I do with this knowledge?" Riley asked.

"Go. Focus on your past you must not. On the now, this moment, you must focus. Only then be able to accept that here is where the force meant you to be will you." Was the final response.

And with this, Riley slipped out of his vision and back into consciousness, opening his eyes to see his body kneeling on the floor and he looked to the hall to see Kanan leaning on the frame of the door.

"What's up?" Kanan asked the boy as he could see the confusion in his place.

"I ... I still feel lost in the force. I don't truly know if I am using the light side or still struggling with the dark." The boy confessed to him.

"I know what you mean. When I was on my own, I struggled with the same sort of thing, but when I started to find my place, I eased into using the light. You will always struggle with the dark, but you must learn to control it and not to use it. It will be a struggle, it was for me, but I know you can do it and I'll help you through it." Kanan told him.

"Thank you Kanan." Riley said with satisfaction.

Suddenly, in the boys mind for a brief second, he flashed back to memories of the pain and suffering he had endured.

Even though it was for a fraction of a second, Kanan saw the teens eyes change from their green hue to an evil glowing yellow and back to the green.

He knew the boy's battle with the dark was only just beginning.

He went down to a knee and put a hand on the shoulder of the terrified teen and looked him in the eyes, "We'll help you through this, me and Ezra."

Riley could on muster a nod to him out of his fear.

**And that's it for this Chapter. Sorry for the very long break. I didn't have very many ideas for what to add onto this story, so I took a break from it and have now returned with renewed energy. I know this part isn't nearly as long as my others and I'm hoping to get back to my usual rhythm now. Again, thank you for your patience and I hope to get the next part out soon. Thank you and see you in the next one!**

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	5. Chapter 5: And So it Begins

**Hello and welcome back to Chapter 5! Less talking, more reading. Let's dive in!**

**Disclaimer: I don't own Star Wars, only my characters.**

Riley, Ezra, and Sabine were all sitting at the holotable on the Ghost talking about whatever came to mind, just chatting as teens always do.

Just then, the door opened and Hera walked in holding a data pad.

"I just got orders from Commander Sato, you guys are going on a supply run." She told the crew. "It shouldn't be anything you kids can't handle. Riley, here's your chance to finally go on your first mission, albeit a boring one."

"I'm just glad I can do something. So, what's the target?" Riley said.

"You guys are going to an abandoned base to get some leftover medical supplies and ammo for Phoenix Squadron. It should be a pretty simple op." She informed the group.

"Alright, I'll get the Phantom prepped for launch. Riley, you can come help me." Sabine said as she started to climb the ladder.

"Right behind you." He responded as he followed her up.

"Ezra, can I talk to you for a second?" Hera called to the teen.

"Sure, what's up?" He responded.

"Keep an eye on Riley. Just make sure he doesn't do anything too crazy. Kanan's orders." She told him.

"Yes ma'am. Sabine and I'll take care of him." He told her with reassurance as he too headed for the ladder.

And with that, they took off and went on their way to the abandoned base.

——————————————————————————————————

As the group approached the base from the sky in the Phantom, both Ezra and Riley felt an odd shiver come over both of them.

They looked at each other and both shared the same wordless look on their faces as they were landing; something bad was prepping to happen.

The ship landed with ease and the crew opened the back door and walked out into the dark base hanger.

"Why do all abandoned bases have to have no light whatsoever?" Ezra commented.

"What now Ezra, you scared?" Riley teased.

"Quit it you two, we have a mission to do." Sabine said to the two as they headed towards the door the went into the base.

She tried the button; obviously, it didn't work because the power's out.

"Help me pull open the door Ezra." Riley said as he started to pull at the door.

Ezra ran to the other side and pulled as well.

With some effort, they finally pulled the doors open and started to move into the base.

The three of them flicked on flashlights or their lightsaber and started their search for the supplies.

"Why are all of our supply runs always in abandoned bases?" Ezra asked as they walked.

"'Cause that's where all the good loot is." Riley said as he bumped Ezra's arm.

"Look, there's the supplies." Sabine said, pointing towards a small storage room with ammo crates and medical supplies in it.

"Good. Grab it and let's get out of here." Ezra said as they walked in and grabbed whatever they could find.

As they were sorting through the old assortment of gear in the room to see what was salvageable, Riley laid his eyes on something: an old Valken-38x sniper rifle from the Clone Wars era just sitting there in a weapon rack.

"Lookie here. A beauty for me to wield." He said as he picked it up, loaded it, and inspected it for any damage or possible jams.

As he was inspecting the gun, he noticed a small red blinking light from where he picked up the gun from.

He looked closer and saw a not-so-fun present: a thermal detonator that was about to go off!

"Everyone get down!" Riley yelled right as the detonators went off, flinging him into a pile of crates while the other two managed to get down in time.

Ezra took a second to register what just happened, then started making his way towards Sabine.

"You good?" He asked her as he helped her stand up.

"Yeah, I'm fine. Where's Riley?" She asked.

"... I'm over here." Riley said between coughs while leaning against some crates.

"Go get him, I'll grab the supplies." He told Sabine as he started to gather the remaining supplies.

Sabine nodded and immediately ran over to the pile of crates to help Riley.

She got over to him and asked, "Are you broken?" while helping him to his feet.

"Got hit in the torso, but I'll live." Riley told her while wincing as he tried to stand.

As Sabine was trying to help him stand, she put her hand on his torso and felt that his shirt was soaking and ripped a little.

She looked at her hand to find that it was blood; Riley's blood.

"You're hurt. Hold still and we'll patch you up." Ezra said as he walked over with some medical supplies to use on him.

"No," Riley said as he pushed them away. "That can be done later. Let's get out of here before whoever set those bombs comes looking for us. Ezra, can you grab that rifle? If I'm going to get scars on a mission I at least want a reward for it."

"Fine. I got it." Ezra said as he picked up the blaster and started to walk out of the room.

Sabine helped Riley up and walked out of the base and into the hanger to their ship with Ezra right behind them carrying the supplies and Riley's new sniper.

Once they got to the Phantom, Sabine set Riley down and she and Ezra started to load the Phantom.

Riley sat leaning on the Phantom watching the door for whoever might be coming.

As he was doing that, he watched five storm troopers run through that same door towards them.

"Hey, stop right there!" One of the troops yelled to them.

"Now would be a good time for that rifle." Riley said looking at Ezra, to which the rifle was passed to him.

Riley took aim and started to lay down cover fire for Ezra and Sanine to get to cover as he took out two of the troopers.

As the two rolled behind some crates, Sabine took one of her "miracles" towards the troops killing two more and leaving 1 left over for Ezra to shoot with his pistol.

"Alright, the supplies are loaded up. Let's get out of here before more come." Ezra said as he ran over to Riley to help him onto the Phantom.

Sabine came over as well and the three walked onto the ship and set Riley down in a chair with Sabine sitting next to him while Ezra manned the ship to get them out of here.

"Spectre 6 to Spectre 2, we were ambushed but got the supplies. Riley's banged up but he'll live. We're on route to the Ghost." Ezra said into his comm link as he lifted off and begun to fly out of the atmosphere.

"What happened Spectre 6?" Hera asked.

"The Empire set a trap for us with explosives but we made it out in one piece; mostly one piece. We'll patch Riley up on the way, don't worry about it." Ezra told her.

"Fine. Hurry up and get here please." Hera said with a hint of concern in her voice.

"We will. Spectre 6 out." Ezra said as he guided the ship towards their route to the Ghost and engaged hyperspace.

"Can't believe it's my first mission and I'm already having to deal with this." Riley said as Sabine was trying to scan for the full extent of the damage using a hand-held scanner.

"Sometimes that's how it is. I need to move your shirt if I'm going to patch you up." Sabine instructed while pulling out some bacta gel and some bandages.

"Alright. Make it fast please. I don't want to bleed out yet." He said as he let her pull up his shirt to expose the wound.

She pulled up his shirt and gasped in disbelief.

"How's it look?" Ezra said as he came over to help and saw what Sabine gasped at: around the wound, which was pretty bad on it's own, were scars, tons of scars of different shapes and sizes all over his torso.

The shear amount of scars made the two shiver in place.

Riley noticed what they were staring at and said, "Please don't tell the others. I don't need a pity party over my past."

Sabine started to apply the bacta gel to the wound, "Here's the fun part."

"I'm ready." Riley informed her as she smeared the gel onto the wound, to which Riley winced in pain.

Riley did everything in his power to not loose control from the pain he felt for the few seconds it took.

Sabine then bandaged the wound and said, "There, that'll hold until we get back to the Ghost.**"**

"Thanks." Riley said.

"I'm going to take the shirt off so we can clean it and repair it." Sabine told him.

"Alright. I guess I'm going to have to prepare for what comes later." He said as he, with the help of Sabine, took the shirt all the way off to reveal even more scars than the two had seen before.

Ezra tried to picture in his mind what in the world Riley had done to get all these scars.

"I'll explain it when we get back to the Ghost. It doesn't seem like I'll have much of a choice anyways." Riley said, reading Ezra's face.

Ezra, though shocked at the response because he hadn't said anything, nodded and went back to the pilot seat as they were coming out of hyperspace.

They soon docked with the Ghost and Sabine and Ezra both helped Riley out of the ship and to the medical room while the rest of the crew unloaded the supplies from the Phantom.

After everything was unloaded, the crew went into the medical room to help Ezra and Sabine make sure that Riley was stable.

That's when everyone else actually noticed the scars all over the teen's body, which made them shiver just like Ezra and Sabine did on the Phantom, but they quickly snapped out of it to help.

Once they saw that Riley was stable and that he could sit up without pain, they let him catch his breath for a second.

After that, Riley said, "So I guess everyone has gotten a good look at my assortment of old wounds and nobody's going to leave the room until I explain them."

Everyone nodded and Riley sighed, "It's a very long story, so bear with me. It's not really the easiest to tell either. Before I start, I need you all to promise me that you won't hate me after it either."

Everyone was kind of shocked, but Kanan responded, "We promise." to which the rest of the crew nodded at that.

**And that's where I'm going to end this chapter. I hope you enjoyed and I'll try to come out with the next one pretty soon. Thank you for reading and I'll see you in the next one!**


	6. Chapter 6: Life Leaves Scars

**Welcome back! There will be some long dialogue in this chapter just so you know. As always, l****ess talking, more reading. Onto Chapter 5.**

**Disclaimer: I don't own Star Wars, only my created characters.**

"All right, this story starts way back. I was born to a family on a planet I don't remember as an only child. I wasn't even a year old when the Empire came and destroyed the place I lived in a massacre. I only survived because a Mandolorian bounty hunter helped me escape and brought me to Mandolore and adopted me into his clan." Riley said.

"So you were a foundling?" Sabine asked him.

"Yes. A foundling because of what the Empire did to my home." Riley said to her.

"What's a foundling?" Ezra asked.

"In Mandolorian culture, it's a child who was brought in and raised in by a clan." Sabine said.

"I lived with them for most of my life until the empire finally conquered us and forced me into the imperial academy. While I was there, I far surpassed my fellow cadets and they suspected it was because I was force sensitive. Of course, I didn't know so I told them I wasn't. They ended up taking me away to some unknown place and constantly tortured me. That's one of the ways I got these scars. Finally, after a lot of pain, they brought me in front of the Grand Inquisitor who gave me two choices: become an Inquisitor or die rotting in my cell. I was left with no other choice. I became what I feared. Not just an Inquisitor, a monster. I did some of the worst things you couldn't dream of doing and they still affect me today. I was tortured everyday both physically and mentally for the last 4 years, making my life miserable. I couldn't do it any longer. I just wanted it all to end. During a mission, my ship was shot down and I crashed on Lothal. When I came to, I felt terrible because I couldn't bear to go back. I left everything I had and ran. The Empire thought I was dead and still does. The only thing I still have from my past was the Mandolorian helmet from when I came of age. I had stored it in my ship and when I crashed and it's the only thing I took. I found a town and did my best to survive by becoming a bounty hunter for a little. I had no morals and had nothing left to lose. Eventually, I heard about a small Imperial shipment of supplies and weapons and I decided I might back a little from an Empire that took so much from me. So, I went to steal that stuff and that's how I met you people. I've never really had a family except for the Mandos, but being with you guys has changed my life. I used to have nothing to believe in, but now, thanks to you, I have a chance to live again."

Everryone in the room was left speechless at what they just heard; everone, that is, except for Ezra.

"You and I are one in the same: we both have lost our parents and have been on our own for most of our life, and now, we've gotten a second chance in life." Ezra said to him.

"The only difference is you don't have to fear the monster you were and possibly still are." Riley said.

"Kanan and I can still help you with that. There's still hope." Ezra told him.

"I really hope so." Riley said.

Ezra put his hand on Riley's shoulder, "There always hope."

"Thank you, all of you, for not giving up on me." Riley said to them.

"Of course, Spectre 7." Hera said to which Riley smiled at.

———————————————————————————————

It has been a week since the mission.

Riley's wound was still healing, but he managed to continue his learning of the Jedi ways and was becoming stronger still.

When he wasn't doing that, he was fiddling with and upgrading his new rifle.

He already added a hybrid sight with short and longe range selections and a modified the barrel and fire selections for the rifle to his liking.

Riley was introduced to Rex during this time and showed him the modifications he made to the old clone rifle which impressed Rex enough to help him get some more parts for the rifle that were not as old and were better taken care of to replace the old, barely functioning parts.

As he was fiddling with his rifle, Sabine walked in to the medical room.

"Hey, how's the healing going?" She asked him.

"Slowly. I should be out of here in a day or two. Can't wait to get out of here and do something. Anything other than getting my bandages changed." He said jokingly.

She chuckled at the remark, "I'm sure you are."

"So, about Mandolore, when's the last time you were there?" Riley asked her.

"I haven't been there since I escaped the Academy. My family's not really too fond of me. Why haven't you gone back?" Sabine said.

"I don't have a ship and I don't think they know I'm still alive. I don't know if they would want to see me anyway." Riley told Sabine.

"Why would they not want to see you?" Sabine asked.

"I could ask the same." Riley said.

"My family thinks I'm a traitor and want to kill me. What about you?"

"With the things I did for the Empire, I pretty sure they hate my guts and would kill me on sight. I want to go back and make things right, but I fear I may make things worse in the process." Riley told her.

"What did you do to make you think that?" Sabine asked.

"Things, things that still haunt me to this day." Riley told her in shame.

Sabine wanted to press, but she didn't. She didn't want Riley to dwell on whatever he did.

——————————————————————————————————————————

Riley awoke and looked around.

His wrists, ankles, and chest were strapped down to a table.

He looked around the room but could only see dark walls around him with one having a door and a light above the table he was laying on.

Suddenly, the door opened and a interrogator droid flew into the room with the robotic monster walking in behind it.

It suddenly clicked in Riley's head: he was back at the Inquisitor training facility and he was going to be submitted to his "training" again.

"No. This isn't real." Riley whispered under his breath.

The monster walked over to the left side of the table and looked down upon Riley telling him the same thing he always told him before torturing him in his menacing robotic voice, "Pain will be your biggest weapon. It gives you strength and is the most powerful emotion for the dark side."

"No. I escaped." Riley said with fear in his voice.

"Here, you will feel true pain and suffering. This will be all you will know. You will be my slave of destruction." The monster told me.

"No!" Riley yelled as he fell out of the medical bed and onto the floor of the medical room.

The crew rushed into the room ready to fight just to see Riley on his hands and knees crying and saying, "No more pain. I can't take it."

Ezra and Kanan could feel nothing but pain and fear radiating from the teen, to which they dropped to their knees to try to comfort him.

Sabine dropped as well and started asking him, "What happened?"

The only thing that came out of his mouth between tears was, "I can't go back."

Ezra used the force to see why the teen was in such distress and saw nothing but horror.

He took Riley into a hug and told him, "You're not there, you're on the Ghost. It was a dream. You're safe. They can't hurt you anymore."

Kanan quickly followed suite as he felt Riley's fear slowly drop.

Soon, the whole crew joined in to comfort the teen and he finally calmed down as his new family embraced him.

The hug felt like years for Riley; long, comfortable years.

When the hug finally ended, life came back to Riley but this time he was in one piece.

"Riley, you need to tell us what's going on." Ezra said.

"I ... I saw myself as an Inquisitor again. I was going to be tortured again as training. It was something that happened everyday for 4 years of my life. That ... that monster used my pain to make me a weapon. I became the Empire's secret executioner. I massacred hundreds. I thought that if I did that then the pain would stop, but it never did." He told the group in shame of what he'd done.

"But then, on the day that I crashed, while I wished I had died, the light called to me and offered me a different choice. I fled from my past lelife and tried to move onto a better one. The biggest problem for me is my past won't stop haunting me and I don't think it ever will." He added after a pause.

"Kanan, we need to talk." Hera told him as they started to head to the door while Ezra, Sabine, and Zeb helped Riley back up into his bed.

The two stepped out of the room and Hera started, "Kanan, you need to help him with his fears. They're tearing him apart. You helped Ezra before with something like this."

"I agree, but this isn't anything like what Ezra was dealing with. I honestly don't know if I can help him, but I might know someone who can if I can't ." Kanan told her.

Hera sighed, "That poor kid. He's been through a lot."

"Yeah. We need to take care of him, for his sake and sanity." Kanan said.

**And that's it for this chapter. I'll be back soon again with another. See you next time!**


	7. Chapter 7: The Return To The Light

**Hello and welcome to Chapter 7. Less talking, more reading. Let's hop right into it.**

Riley was now finally out of the medical room and could now do literally anything else other than sitting and doing nothing.

The first thing he did was head straight to Kanan's room to talk to him.

He hit the buzzer on the door and heard Kanan say, "Come in," through the door.

Riley opened the door to find Kanan sitting on his bed as if he was waiting for him.

He walked in and Kanan asked the teen, "Are you ready for what you are about to do?"

"I'm ready." Riley told him with a determined look on his face.

They both then sat on the floor and began to meditate together in Kanan's room.

At first, Riley felt impatient, but as he went deeper into his meditation, he started to calm and open up to the force.

Soon, Riley opened his eyes and found himself not in Kanan's room, but on a beach staring at the ocean.

He sat confused and looked around him; it seemed familiar to him.

He looked forward again to find Master Yoda sitting in front of him.

"Ah child, returned you have." Master Yoda said to Riley.

"Master, uh, returned where? What is this place?" Riley asked, confused.

"Hm, remember do you not?" Yoda asked him.

"It seems familiar, like I've been here before, but I don't remember where from." Riley said, trying to think about where it's from, "I see it in my dreams all the time. It's like a place of comfort for me in them, but I don't know what or where this place is and I don't know how I know it."

"Ah, a place from your childhood, this is. From a long time ago, it is. A place of safety, it was for you." Yoda told the teen.

" I remember now, but master, I came to you for help." Riley told the former grand master.

Yoda laughed, "Ah, yes. Knowledge, you seek. Help with your emotions, you need." Yoda said.

"Yes master, I want to become a Jedi. I know that my emotions are the biggest thing preventing me from becoming one. That, and my fear of my past and the monster I was not so long ago." Riley said.

"A Jedi, you are close to becoming. The fear of your past and your emotions, you can overcome. If you don't do this, be at peace you will never be." Master Yoda told him.

"I understand master, what must I do?" Riley said.

"Your past you must let go of. Become one with the force again you must child." Yoda told him.

"How can I do this now?" Riley asked.

"Let the light flow through you. Come to terms with your past you must." Yoda instructed him.

Riley closed his eyes and began.

Images of his past flashed through his eyes, images of pain and suffering. Memories of watching his parents die in front of him, being forced into Imperial servitude and saying bye for the last time to his clan, the moment the Empire took him away to prison, the years he spent rotting away in prison constantly being tortured, the years of constant pain after becoming an Inquisitor, the massacres he committed, the Jedi he had killed, it was almost too much for him to bear.

But suddenly, he started seeing moments that had a different feeling, a feeling of peace and happiness.

He saw himself playing at the beach as a baby, he was joking with his foundling friends and brothers in the clan, him besting some of his friends at target practice and teasing them about it, even as an Inquisitor when he let some people live, though he was chastised severely for it, and last, from the night before, when the Ghost crew all came together around him to help him and hold him in his most vulnerable moment.

He started to ease up and accept his past for what it is, just memories of a life that can't harm him anymore and he had was now where he needed to be.

For the first time in his life, he felt at peace with himself and his past.

He opened his eyes to see the shells from the beach floating all around him and Master Yoda smiling at him.

"At peace with your past and with the force, you now are." Yoda said to the teen.

"Yes master, I am." Riley said, feeling as if the galaxy had been lifted off of his shoulders.

Master Yoda chuckled, "A Jedi, you have now become."

The master raised his hand and started to bring something down from the sky.

Riley looked up to see a small shining object float down towards himself.

He stuck his hands out as the object landed in his hands, he looked into them to see something that made him beam: it was a purple kyber crystal, one of the rarest crystals attainable.

"Few have done what you have managed to do Riley. A rare crystal to match a rare kind of Jedi. On a special path, you now are. " Master Yoda told him.

"Thank you master. I won't let you down." The teen said proudly.

"I know you won't." The wise master said to him.

And with that, everything around Riley faded to black.

He soon awoke on the floor of Kanan's room with Kanan now not in the room like he was when they started.

He stood up and walked out of the room to hear the crew talking in the main room about him.

"I hope Riley's going to be alright." Hera said.

"He'll be alright. I know he will." Kanan said.

"I may not like him a lot, but that kid's a tough one. He'll be fine." Zeb said.

"He's been through so much, this should be easy for him." Ezra said.

He walked to the entrance to see everyone sitting around the holotable and he watched for a second.

He now saw them as family, a family he could protect and would die for.

He smiled and walked into the room.

"What are you all so worried about?" He asked jokingly as they all turned to see him.

Kanan stood and walked over to Riley, "How did it go?" with Ezra following behind.

Riley held up the crystal to show him, "Looks like I'm officially a Jedi now."

Everyone looked at the crystal in awe.

Kanan felt so proud of Riley for standing up to his fears when he was in a situation where most people wouldn't be able to that he pulled the teen into a hug.

Ezra joined in, and soon the whole crew joined to make another big hug.

"I'm almost shocked that you were able to do it so fast." Kanan said.

"Once I understood what I needed to do, it was pretty simple." He said.

"A lot of people wouldn't have been able to do the same." Hera said to him.

"Sabine, do Mandolorians ever quit?" Riley asked.

"Never." Sabine chuckled at him.

They finally let go of the hug.

"Thank you for being my new family." Riley said to them all.

"We'll always be here for you." Ezra told him, putting his hand on his shoulder.

**And that's going to do it four this Chapter, the redemption ark. I'll be back with another one soon. As always, see you in the next one!**


	8. Chapter 8: Return To Combat

**Hi and welcome to Chapter 8! In case you didn't know, this takes place in Season 3 before Sabine goes home to meet her parents. Just so you guys know. Anyways, onto the story.**

After a month since becoming a Jedi, Riley still only had a few pieces for his eventual lightsaber.

He was, however, nailing jobs together like clockwork lately greeting countless missions done for the Rebellion.

He had completed many kinds to, sneaking into bases and stealing data undetected, a couple assassinations, stealing Imperial cargo, even going planet-side and robbing the Empire of multiple weapons cases and medical supplies without detection, one of those missions he even managed to find a Westar-35 pistol, which he now modified and includes as his secondary.

He had become the Rebellion's silent infiltrator due to his high knowledge of Imperial codes and movements.

For the most part, he did a lot of solo missions that lasted a few days at a time.

He also only ever came home with a couple bruises as injuries, the worst being a broken rib from when he took a gut punch from an Imperial trooper, to which he threw him to his doom.

He had started to develop a reputation for being a very efficient worker and had a 100% mission success rate and though he was friendly

His force powers were getting more and more powerful especially since he didn't have a lightsaber, so he had to be developed in the force to protect himself.

Today, he was chilling in his room in the Ghost as it was touched down at Chopper Base and he didn't have any missions anytime soon.

He was staring at the set of Mando armor he recovered when he first met the Ghost crew, thinking of what he was going to do with it.

He had mounted it on his wall and wasn't sure if he wanted to use it to armor himself or not.

His thoughts then dwelled on back when he was with his clan.

He remembered some of the things he did as a Mandolorian, the friends he used to have, the paths that were open to him at the time.

In a way, he missed that life more than he thought he would.

Suddenly, he heard a knock on his door.

This didn't happen very often for Riley so he was startled a little and stuttered when he spoke, "Uh,I,uh, come in."

The door opened and Sabine walked in.

She chuckled towards him and said, "Didn't mean to startle you so bad."

Riley looked embarrassed, "Sorry. I don't usually get many visitors. Anyways, what did you want to talk about?"

_"Even someone with his kind nature can get startled and embarrassed." _She thought to herself.

"I just came to chat. I figured since you didn't have a mission for a couple days we talk a little." Sabine said.

"That's cool with me. You can sit if you want." Riley said, motioning to sit next to him on his bed.

She walked over and sat next to him, "So how's the lightsaber building coming along?"

"Ridiculously slow. I've barely found anything I could use to build one and it's been a month." He told her.

"You'll eventually get the part you need. It'll take time." She said to him.

"I know. I just hope I can find all the parts soon. I want to see that purple blade before I pass, and with the mission I've been doing lately, that may happen sooner than later." Riley said.

"Don't talk like that. You're not going to die anytime soon." She told him.

"I'm just being realistic. You don't get far by not being." He said to her, "Anyways, I'm hopeful that I'll find a few more pieces of tech on the next couple of missions. Just another added on to the list of things I've stolen from the Empire."

"With that armor being on the list to." Sabine said, pointing to the Mandolorian Armor mounted on the wall with his helmet underneath on it on his desk.

"Yeah, about that, sorry for the comment you got back then. It wasn't personal. I can literally say I'm a different person then I was back then." He said to her with sincerity.

"No offense taken. We're Madolorians, that means being hostile to strangers." She joked.

Riley chuckled as well, and that seemed to lighten the tension and the mood in the room a little.

"Now, about the armor, what are your plans for it?" Sabine asked him.

"I don't know. I'm going to try to get some of the pieces to stick on my black jacket and pants for now until I find a body glove, but I don't think plain white is my color or style." He said, looking at Sabine with a smile as he saw her eyes light up.

"Um, I mean, are you sure?" She stumbled her words out.

Riley chuckled, "Go crazy Sabine."

With that, both teens took the armor of the wall, put it in a crate, and carried it to Sabine's room.

Sabine plopped the crate on the floor of her room and walked to the door where Riley was standing.

"Any special requests?" She asked him.

"All I ask is it be some dark colors so I can still blend into the shadows. I'll leave you to the rest of it." He told her.

"Can I see your helmet for this as well? Just to keep the colors the same." She asked him.

"Sure." Riley said as he quickly retrieved his helmet from his desk and handed it to her.

"I'll be a while she told him, and as she closed the door, he jokingly said to her, "And no pink."

"No promises." Sabine replies with a smile as her door finally shut.

"What was that all about?" Riley heard behind him, to which he turned a around to find it was Ezra.

"I let Sabine paint that armor I found from when I first met you guys." Riley told him.

"That explains why she looked so happy. Just be careful. Last time I let her paint one of my stormtrooper helmets, she painted pink with a bunch of hearts all over it." Ezra said.

"That sounds perfect for you. Why didn't you like it?" Riley said while he snickered almost out of control.

Ezra retaliated by punching the still snickering Riley in the shoulder, to which Riley burst out laughing while putting his hands up to blocks some of the onslaught of punches that Ezra was bringing upon him.

Suddenly, a rebel intelligence officer walked into the Ghost with a data pad walking over to the two teens, who quickly stopped their childish behavior.

"Did I catch you at a bad time?" The officer asked.

"No sir." Riley and Ezra said in sync.

The officer chuckled, "Well, Riley, you have another mission. It's a simple objective: infiltrate and steal some data." The officer informed him.

He handed Riley the data pad, "The details are on here. You're scheduled to leave at 13:30 (1:30 pm for non-military personal)."

"Understood sir." Riley said with a quick salute that the officer returned before walking out of the Ghost.

"Well, looks like I'm on assignment faster than I hoped for." He said, looking over the info on the data pad.

"I'll leave you to it." Ezra said.

"Alright, see you later hearts and roses." Riley said to him.

Ezra quickly jerked forward and wound up his arm, to which Riley chuckled and put his hand up.

Riley quickly returned to his room before he got overwhelmed by a hailstorm of furious Ezra blows.

He checked his data pad, which had the current time on top.

"20:30 (8:30 pm). Well, I might as well get some rest. Never know when I'll get some good sleep again." He said to himself as he climbed into his bed and passed out.

—————————————————————————————

It's 13:00 and Riley's prepping his gear for his mission.

He has his Westar-35 loaded and mounted on his chest in his holster with a couple charge packs in his belt and his custom Valken rifle loaded with it's own charge packs on his belt.

He even packed a couple of his own "miracles" curtousy of Sabine for a back up plan in case he's spotted.

He packed some rations and a couple small medpacks just in case.

The only thing he was waiting on was to see if Sabine would be finished with his armor before he left.

She hadn't left her room since he gave her his armor and when he tried to peek in on how it was going, she nearly killed him and he didn't bother her after that.

He was still hoping she would get to him before he had to leave because he found a way to mount his armor on his clothes for extra protection.

He read the mission info for the hundredth time in his room to make sure he knew every detail.

The mission was to retrieve some intel on designs and possible flaws in some of the Empires ground walkers and fighters.

The data center was in the middle of nowhere on Lothal so he would have to land far away and infiltrate on foot to be undetected.

He had already stolen data from this facility once before and as far as he knew, they didn't even notice it was gone because he had replacement files to take up space on hand as always, just some schematics to take space that he had already made copies of, to stuff into the system.

All he had to do was get in and out without detection and retrieve the intel they needed and any other data he thought could be useful.

Pretty simple for him, this was Riley's specialty so this would be a pretty easy mission for him.

While laying across his bed studying their defenses to look for an opening as a backup plan in case his primary escape route was blocked off, he heard a knock on his door.

"Enter." He said, still focused on the data pad.

The door slid open and there was Sabine holding his painted armor.

"I thought you might like these for your mission." She teased.

Riley finally looked up to see her holding his now painted armor.

He stared in awe for a couple seconds, "Wow. You sure that's mine?"

"What? You don't like it?" She said, kind of sad.

"No. I love it." He said to her as he stood up up from his bed smiling.

He picked up his helmet from the armor and studied it, "You changed the paint job."

His helmet went from white to black with his old red and green accents were now repainted to be a little darker.

The rest of the armor was painted black and had a bunch of different silver, green, and red accents all over the place.

All in all, it looked pretty sick and dangerous.

"Thought it would look better if it matched the rest." She said to him.

"Thank you." He said to her.

She smiled, "Want some help putting it on?" She asked.

"Sure." Riley said, grabbing the chest plate and mounting it on his jacket.

Within a minute, they had both put all the armor plates on Riley and he put his helmet on as Sabine took a step back and studied it.

"How's it look?" He asked as he spread his arms out to give her a good idea.

"Well, it's my work so of course it's perfect." She said.

"Not going to argue with that." Riley said.

Just then, Riley looked at the data pad and saw the time: 13:29.

"Well, looks like I'm leaving now. I'll try not to scratch it right away." Riley said.

"You better not. I spent a lot of time on that masterpiece." Sabine said, jokingly.

"Alright, I'll see you later." Riley said as he gathered his gear and headed towards the Phantom where Ezra was waiting to fly him in and drop him off.

**Alright, that's it for this part. I'll be back soon with another Chapter. See you in the next one!**


	9. Chapter 9: Robbing Data

**Welcome to Chapter 9. I hope you guys are still enjoying this story. Onto the reading.**

Riley had just been dropped off in the middle of nowhere in the tall grass of Lothal about 4 klicks away from the data center at around 16:00.

Right now, he was currently walking on his way to the data center to find and steal the data he was told to steal.

He knew it would take a while, so he was blasting some music on his headphones while he was walking to the base just to chill while looking at his data pad with the mission data on it to keep his mind fresh on the mission.

He was walking in the tall grass next to the main road to avoid any patrolling troopers walking on the main road as well as incoming vehicles.

About an hour and a half later, he had finally reached the outside of the base, which was in the middle of a small mountain range for some cover and secrecy.

Riley had to give props to them, they did pick a good spot for a hidden data center, too bad he knew about it.

He decided he was going to wait until night when most of the workers would be in their barracks and out of the data center to best avoid detection.

He found a good vantage point on a small hill just outside of and overlooking the base to watch from and waited.

After about 8 hours of watching over the center, he decided it was time to move in.

He got down from his vantage point and used the shadows to his advantage to sneak his way into the base.

There were still quite a few patrolling troopers guarding the base, but it was pretty easy for Riley to avoid them as he moved from shadow to shadow to avoid detection.

As he neared the center, he looked for the ventilation shaft into the building to sneak in.

He snuck around to the back wall which was all in shadows and he found the small hatch for the ventilation.

He didn't see any troopers, but just to check, he used the force to see if Gould sense any near; nope, no one near.

He then used his data pad to scan for cameras watching over the room.

His pad picked up a couple, so he used his skills to set the cameras on a loop for about five minutes, enough time for him to steal the data and some extra stuff and get out of there without it being suspicious.

After that, he opened the shaft up and dropped into the main data room.

There 4 different computers with different information on all of them, so Riley would have to look through them all to find the data.

As he started looking through the first computer, he used the data pad to scan the second one to speed up the process.

The first two didn't have anything useful so he moved to the other two.

He did what he did before and his data pad almost immediately picked up the file and copied the info onto the pad without it being traced, he continued to look through the data on the computer he was on and found some interesting data.

He found a place that was housing tons of imperial weapons and copied the data over to his data pad as well, but then he saw something, something scary; he found a file on himself.

He nervously opened it up to thankfully still say KIA on his file so they still thought he was dead but when he went to see if they possibly had his birth planet on record, he was saddened to find they only had Mandolore as his home.

He also found some files on his fellow rebels that he corrupted but made it look like the computer corrupted the files because of a malfunction.

With that, he knew he didn't have a lot of time before the cameras switched back on, so he quickly grabbed his pad and jumped back into the ventilation shaft a few seconds before the cameras turned back on.

As he got in and closed the vent cover, a duo of patrolling storm troopers walked in.

_Good timing. _He thought to himself as he started to crawl through the shaft to leave the center.

He made his way through and out of the duct easily and managed to sneak his way through the shadows like the ghost he was and out of the base.

All he had to do was walk back to where he was dropped off and he would be back to base and could finally sleep; he was exhausted from the 5 hours he was up before the mission, the 9 and a half hours on the ground before the mission and the 1 and a half it took to complete the mission and the final hour and a half back to the LZ and the time it took them to get there.

He waited about 30 minutes of walking before contacting the Ghost so he wasn't too close to the base for them to pick it up and so he wouldn't have to wait forever for them to pick him up.

"Spectre 7 to ghost, I have the info and I'm on my way to the LZ. I'm about and hour out." He slurred from exhaustion into his comlink.

"Roger that Spectre 7, we're en route to the LZ and are about 2 hours out. Hold out down there until we get there."

Riley sighed, "Roger that. Spectre 7 out," and continued his long trek to the LZ.

The only problem was that Riley was walking on the main road and forgot there were still patrols of troops watching the road.

Next thing he knew, he bumped right into a patrol of two troopers.

"Hands up. What are you doing out here?" One of the troops said to Riley.

Riley slowly raised his hands above his head and remained silent.

As that trooper took a step towards Riley, he quickly dropped his hands and gave that trooper a one-two to the head, knocking him out of the way.

The second trooper aimed his gun at Riley, but it was quickly slapped out of his hands and was quickly taken care of and knocked to the ground.

Riley turned around and was met with 3 quick shots, 2 to the chest and 1 to the shoulder, from the first trooper who he had threw the first punches at.

The shots knocked Riley over, though he still drew his pistol form his leg holster while falling and shot the trooper dead before Riley even hit the ground.

Riley hit the ground hard and laid there for a second, having the wind slightly knocked out of him.

He didn't get much time before the other trooper stood back up and heaved a kick into Riley's side.

Riley then pointed his gun at the trooper and before he could slap it away, he was shot dead, falling onto the teen.

Riley's was once again knocked out of him because of the trooper dropping right onto his chest

Riley laid there for a second before pushing the dead trooper off and assessing his damages.

He had been hit in the bescar, which didn't pierce the armor, but still bruised the skin underneath where he was hit and his ribs were now killing him where he was struck, but otherwise, he was fine.

He looked down and saw some black carbon scoring on his newly painted armor and flinched.

_Man, Sabine's going to kill me when I get back. _He thought to himself.

He stood up slowly because of the pain and dragged the dead troopers bodies into the tall grass to hide them.

Finally, he got back on his way to the LZ once again, this time being off of the road to avoid more detection.

He eventually got to the LZ without further complications and found a big rock that he could sit and lean against and waited, doing his best to keep his eyes open.

Finally, after a half hour of flickering eyelids and wincing because of drifting and moving too much, he heard engine sounds coming down from the sky.

_Finally_. He thought as he saw the Ghost now hovering above where he was sitting.

The Ghost finally landed and the bay doors opened to the sight of Sabine and Hera walking down towards the teen.

He did his best to stand up without looking sleep deprived and started to walk slowly over, holding his rib where he was kicked.

Hera immediately noticed the teen was having trouble walking on his own, mostly because of not sleeping for 18 hours (he woke up at 9 am), and went over to help him into the ship.

"Do you have the intel?" Hera asked.

"Got it and a little extra." Riley told her, handing her the data pad while being helped onto the Ghost.

"You said you wouldn't scratch that armor." Sabine said jokingly.

"I did my best, but I couldn't avoid making it a little battle worn. I like it a little worn." He told her, playing along even though he was exhausted.

"All right you two, quit it. Help me take him to his bed." Hera told the two as Sabine helped Hera and Riley walk to the teen's room.

They walked down the hall and into his room, where Hera and Sabine placed the teen on his bed as carefully as they could as to not hurt his side.

Sabine was even nice enough to help him take his armor off to help him sleep better and she put a bacta patch on his sore side to help it heal while Hera went back to the cockpit and took off.

"Thank you." He said weakly, battling sleep but managing a small smile.

"You're welcome," She said, rubbing the cheek of the sleep deprived teen while smiling as well, "Sleep well."

She then turned and left the room, leaving the teen to his thoughts.

_Finally, sleep. _Riley thought as he drifted off as the sounds of the crashing waves rolled in.

**And that'll do it for this chapter. Let me know how you like it. I'll have the next one out soon enough. Anyways, I'll see you in the next one.**


	10. Chapter 10: The Support

**Hello and welcome to the first double digit chapter. Hope you enjoy. Anyways, let's get into it.**

Riley opened his eyes and looked around to find himself once again on the beautiful beach from his memories.

It was and still is a place of calm and peace for the teen.

He looked forward and saw once again, sitting on a branch in front of him, was Master Yoda.

"Welcome back child." Yoda said to Riley.

"Master, what is this place? Or really, where is it? Are you here?" Riley asked the wise master.

"Here, I am not. But this place, strong with the force it is. A deep connection you have with it." The master told him.

"I want to come here again one day." Riley said to Yoda.

"Very soon, that day may be." Yoda told him.

"You mean I'll find this place one day?" Riley asked him in an exited tone.

"Very soon my child. Very soon." Master Yoda told him.

And with that, Riley finally woke up.

He opened his eyes to find himself in his room on his bed.

_Another dream._ Riley thought to himself.

He started to get up and lean on his side and instantly winced in pain, he had forgotten about what happened on his last mission, though it was more sore than sharp pain.

He laid back down for a second, then this time he carefully got up from his bunk and stood up in his room.

He saw his armor on his table and remembered Sabine helped him get it off and chuckled to himself as he picked up his chest plate and looked at it.

_Protects against blaster bolts but can't defend from a simple kick to the chest. Still surprised Sabine didn't strangle me in my sleep._ He thought to himself.

He then slipped his armor on and walked out to the common room of the Ghost.

When he got to the doorway, he saw Ezra was sitting there at the holotable watching the HoloNet.

Ezra looked up and said, "Took you long enough to finally wake up."

"What do you mean? How long was I out?" Riley asked, confused.

"Dude, you slept all day yesterday. It's 9:30 the day after you got back. You must've had some good sleep." Ezra said.

Riley was shocked, "I guess I did. Anything happen while I was out?"

"Kanan and I trained and that was about it." Ezra told him.

"Well, at least I didn't miss much. Do you know where Sabine is?" Riley said.

"She's in her room as always." Ezra told him.

"Figures. I'll talk to you later." Riley said to him.

"Alright. See ya. By the way, don't take too long, we have another mission briefing in a little bit." Ezra said as he sat back down at the holotable and tuned back into the HoloNet.

"Alright, I'll make sure not to make you guys wait forever." Riley said, chuckling.

Riley then went off to Sabine's room.

He got to the door and knocked to see if Sabine was awake.

When he didn't hear her respond right away, he assumed she was still sleeping and he turned to walk away, but then he heard, "Enter," through the door.

He stood shocked for a second, but then pressed the button and the door opened.

The door slid open and he saw Sabine sitting on her bed waving him over.

"Sorry if I woke you up." Riley said as he walked over and sat next to her.

"Nah, I was already awake. You on the other hand, when I said sleep well, I didn't mean sleep for two days straight." She joked, punching his arm.

"Yeah, I guess that's what happens when you're up 18 hours straight sneaking through defenses and fist fighting two stormtroopers on the way back to LZ." Riley responded chuckling.

"Don't you almost always do multi day missions?" She asked him.

"Yeah, but I still sleep on those missions. What did you think I did, stay up for 72 hours straight and complete missions without being seen?" Riley asked.

"Good point." She responded.

"At least I'm awake now huh?" Riley said.

"Yeah. I guess." She said to him, smiling.

They sat in silence for a second.

"So, why did you come in here?" Sabine asked him.

They sat in silence for another second as Riley tried to put words together.

"I came in here to tell you something. I think that soon we are going to find out where I came from." He said.

"What do you mean by that?" She asked him.

"Honestly I'm not sure, but while I was sleeping, an old friend came to me in a dream and told me I would see a place I know from my dreams again soon." He told her.

"Kinda like a force vision?" She asked him.

"Yeah. The only problem is, I don't know what I'll like what I find." He told her.

"Hey, we'll help you find whatever it is, and if it's bad, you still have us." Sabine said, putting her hand on the teen's shoulder.

"Thank you Sabine." He said to her, smiling.

Suddenly, they heard a bang on the door and heard Zeb shout out, "Quit making out in there and head to the living room, we got a debriefing in 1 minute."

The two blushed subtly for a second but then snapped out of it.

"Shall we?" She said, standing up.

"Alright. Let's go." He said, joining her as they both walked out of her room towards the living room.

They walked into the room to see the rest of the crew talking at the holotable as they waited for the last two walked in.

"Took you two long enough." Zeb said to them as Sabine sat at the holotable and Riley stood next to it.

"Yeah, yeah. Get to the briefing." Sabine said.

"Alright," Kanan said, "this mission should be simple enough. We are stealing some weapons crates from the Empire courtesy of Riley."

Riley smiled and waved his hand in the air.

"It's a small weapons depot stocked to the brim with more rifles and proton torpedos than we can carry. It's not too heavily guarded, so we shouldn't have too much resistance." Kanan continued to brief.

"So, what's the plan?" Riley asked.

"We're going to drop in a little while out and head into the base on foot, take out the guards, and secure a landing zone with the gear we're stealing, signal the Ghost to come and land, and load up and get out of there." Hera said.

"Sounds easy enough." Sabine said.

"Is there a tower in the depot? I can provide sniper fire and suppression from there." Riley said.

"There is." Kanan said.

"Alright, I'll go up there before you start the attack and I'll provide cover from there." Riley said.

"Alright, it's settled. Mission briefing's over, go get prepped. We'll be there in an hour." Kanan said as they all left to their rooms to prepare.

Riley opened his door and grabbed his helmet and threw it on.

He also checked his pistol and loaded a fresh charge pack into it as well as his rifle and put some extras on his belt for both guns in case.

He finally put his gifted miracles on his belt and then did a quick inspection of both of his guns just in case to kill time, of course he found no problems.

With that, he headed to the ladder and slid down it into the cargo area where everyone else was waiting

Riley just chilled while he waited for the bay door to open, once again listening to music to chill out before the mission, it had become a tradition he had done before every mission.

After a while, he finally heard Hera announce that they were landing and checked his scope one last time to make sure there were no blemishes or smudges on the lens.o

He then felt the ship hit the ground and the doors opened and the small squad of Kanan, Ezra, Sabine, Zeb, and Riley walked out together and on their way to the weapons depot.

They all chatted a little and had a little banter between the group, but once they got to the base, they went straight to buisness.

Riley snuck his way through the shadows as always to the tower and climbed up the ladder as quietly as he could to not attract attention.

Riley got to the top of the ladder, but before he climbed up, he checked to make sure there were no troopers up there.

There was one trooper up there watching the base, so he climbed up quietly and silently took him out and took position watching over the base.

"Alright, you can commence the attack." Riley said into his comm as he took aim.

"Roger that. Commencing attack."He heard Kanan say.

And with that, he heard the first shots and took aim, found a trooper in his sights, and shot, instantly killing the trooper.

He ended up taking out 4 more troopers while keeping a look out for his fellow crewmates.

Finally, he heard a the constant fire suppress into silence.

"It's clear," Riley said into his comm.

"Roger. I'm signaling Hera." Kanan said.

He then heard the Ghost and watched it fly in and land on the ground as the crew started to get the proton torpedos ready to move.

"Should I come down or stay up here?" Riley asked.

"Come down. We want to get out of here as soon as possible." Kanan said as he started to load the proton bombs into the Ghost with the rest of the crew.

"Roger. Coming down." Riley said.

Suddenly, he heard a gun cock behind his head.

"Hands up rebel scum." The trooper said.

Riley slowly put his rifle down and raised his hands and looked to be surrendering, but then quickly turned and knocked the gun out of the trooper's hands and landed a blow to his head, knocking him to the ground, and drew his pistol and shot the trooper dead.

"You guys need to stop doing that." Riley said to himself as he picked up his rifle and started down the ladder.

When he got to the ground, he started to immediately help out the rest of the crew loading the bombs into the ship.

"Hey, Riley, start loading some of the other weapons onto the ship." Zeb yelled towards him.

Riley nodded and ran over to the weapons crates and started to bring some to the Ghost.

They did that until the crates were all loaded into the Ghost and they were all getting into the Ghost when Hera said, "Hurry up guys. We've got Ties on the scope," through the comm.

They all hurried onto the Ghost and Riley said, "I've got top," as he ran to the top gun to help cover the Ghost as Hera started to take off.

He hopped into the gunner seat and immediately started scanning the skies for the ships incoming.

"Ties coming in at point 5." Hera announced to the crew and Riley turned to see 5 Ties coming rapidly towards the Ghost.

Riley took aim and fired, taking one of the 5 Ties out before they even got in range.

The remaining 4 Ties split up and started to attack from different sides.

Riley followed a second Tie but couldn't quite lock him down until the pilot made a mistake and straightened out for one second too long and Riley took advantage and blew that Tie out of the sky as well.

One of the Ties flew out of his sights towards Sabine's and he yelled, "Sabine, one coming into your scope from 3 o'clock."

She managed to take aim where Riley said and took that Tie out before he had a chance to breathe.

Ezra tracked down one of the last two and blew him out of the sky as they were taking aim and were about to fire on the Ghost.

Riley started following the last Tie until he started his run on the Ghost, then followed it until it straightened out and then fired, blowing the final Tie up and clearing the skies.

_They gotta stop doing that._ Riley thought to himself.

"Skies are clear Hera. Let's get out of here." Riley said.

"Roger that. Entering hyperspace in 3,2,1." Hera said as the ship entered hyperspace.

Riley hopped out of the gunner seat and walked towards his room to drop his gear off before heading to the cockpit for the debrief.

He opened his door, put his rifle on the new wall mount he had set up and his helmet on the table, then walked to the cockpit.

He came in and everyone else was already in there so he leaned against the door way.

"The mission went without a hitch. We got all of the proton bombs and weapons in the depot. Riley, good cover fire and thanks for the info." Kanan said.

"It's what I'm good at." Riley said with a smile.

"I'll run a scan on the Ghost and will let you guys know if we will need repairs when we land. Otherwise, you're dismissed." Hera said.

And with that, everyone left and spread out over the Ghost, with Riley heading to the cargo hold to see if there was anything useful in there.

He peaked in one of the crates he helped steal and saw some gun parts that could be useful in modifying his rifle some more, but also some parts he needed to help build his lightsaber.

He grabbed the parts he could use and brought them to his room.

He then pulled out all of the parts he had gathered over the month and his crystal and put them on the table.

It was finally time to build his own lightsaber.

**And that will do it for this chapter. This took me a long time for me to write, so please excuse me for that. Anyways, I hope you enjoyed and see you in the next one.**


	11. Chapter 11: Welcome Home

**Welcome to Chapter 11. I hope you enjoy this new entry into this story.**

Riley was sitting at the base perimeter meditating to hopefully find some answers on his past visions.

He was sitting for a moment relaxing, and finally, the calming sound of the crashing waves rolled in and he opened his eyes to see the beautiful beach he had grown to know so well.

He felt the same peace he always did when he came to this place and it made him more intrigued than ever to find this place.

Whenever he was struggling with his emotions, he found his way to this beach to help calm himself and collect his thoughts.

Though he came here to learn lessons from the Grand Master himself, who, in a way, was this teen's Master, he came this time to enjoy some peace.

The sound of the crashing waves and the beauty of the view were enough for him to feel like spending his life here.

He knew though, this couldn't last forever, but he always enjoyed it when he had the time to.

He soon opened his eyes again, but he was back on Atollon sitting near the base perimeter and flipped from a kneeling position to sitting on his butt while his elbows were on his knees, lost in thought.

He nearly had a heart attack when he felt a tap on his shoulder, causing him to jump in a ridiculous way.

When Riley turned, he saw it was just Sabine and calmed down.

"Someone's distracted. I called your name 3 times and you didn't respond. What's up?" She said, sitting next to him.

"Well, I was back at the beach I used to know from a long time ago before I was on Mandolore. I was just having some small memories pop up of some of the things I did on that beach." Riley said, staring off into the distance.

"Well, do you want to open up a little bit? I won't tell anyone else if you don't want to." She told him.

"I... sometimes I wish I my parents were here to see me now. I wish I knew them. I wish I could see them." Riley said, eyes watering a little bit.

Sabine wrapped her arm around the teen and pulled him towards her to comfort him as they stared off into the distance.

"I fear what they would think of me if they knew what I've done. I fear they may not accept me as their son if they were here." Riley said almost bursting into tears at the thought, crushing Sabine's soul to see him this way.

"No, that's not true. Your parents would be proud of you. You may have went down the wrong path, but you found your way back. And now, you're here with us making things right. That's whar matters. They would be so proud of you for finding your way back on your own." She said to him.

He turned to look at her, "You really think so?"

She looked into his green eyes and told him with complete sincerity, "I know so Riley."

Riley smiled and looked back out to the view and Sabine laid her head on his shoulder and he put his on top of hers.

He wiped away his tears and took a deep breath; it felt so good for him to release his pent up fear to someone.

"Thank you for listening. It means a lot to me." Riley said to her.

"We all need to release to someone every once in a while." She said to him.

They sat there for little while in silence, just enjoying the peace and quiet as well as the view.

It was something that Riley really needed and it finally happened.

After a while, Zeb walked over and saw the two teens just chilling, and while he didn't want to interrupt the two's moment, he had to at least let them know what he was told for them.

"Hey, lovebirds. Meeting in 30 minutes. Don't be late." He said to them as he quickly turned and walked away.

The two blushed a cherry red as they recognized what he said, however, they didn't let that mess with their moment too much.

They just smiled and continued sitting together and enjoying the time.

About 5 minutes before the alleged briefing time, Riley said, "Alright, we have to go if we don't want to be yelled at."

Sabine sighed, "Okay, fine."

They both stood up and started their walk to the briefing with Riley cracking stupid jokes the whole way.

Once they got to central command, they walked in to the crew with Commander Sato at the table.

"Alright, we're now all here." Hera said to Sato as they turned on the holotable.

"We've been constantly cutting away at the Empire's weapons and ammo. Within a certain amount of time, they may start to get aggressive and put more security on their arms transports and compounds, meaning we won't be able to attack those places as much." Sato told the crew.

"I still have more old bases and other things the Empire hasn't looted if that ever becomes a problem." Rex told the crew.

"Thank you Captain. The only problem with that is we don't know their fleet movements to stay out of the way. We need to know their fleet movements before we plan any more missions." Sato told him.

"You can leave that to me," Riley said. "I can get you that information."

"How?" Sato asked the teen.

"I have my ways. There is a data center on Lothal that has that information, plus, at my old home, I have more useful information on certain fleet movements and fleet make ups that would be helpful." Riley told him.

"Ok. As long as you can get this information easily, I can commence this mission." Sato said.

"As always, I'm in and out without being seen." Riley told him.

"Alright. I'll send the Ghost crew to Lothal to collect information on fleet movements and make ups to better help us better strategize movements. You are dismissed." Commander Sato said as the group walked out of the meeting and towards the Ghost.

"You never really told us about your home." Kanan said towards the teen as they boarded the ship and prepped for takeoff.

"There's not much to tell. It's the place I used as shelter to hide from the Empire and to sleep in when I wasn't bounty hunting, running people's errands, or stealing." Riley told him.

Kanan has managed to almost forget that before joining them, he was just like Ezra, scrounging around doing whatever it took to survive.

Just another kids life ruined by the Empire's tyrannical reign.

"I'm sorry." Kanan said to him, which shocked and confused the teen.

"Sorry for what?" Riley asked him.

"I'm sorry we didn't find you sooner." Kanan said to him.

"I'm just glad you guys found me at all. I don't know if I would've made it a lot longer without you. And don't be sorry. I'm who I am now because of the lessons I've learned in life." Riley told him.

They felt the ship jolt and heard Hera announce they had lifted off.

"Just remember, this crew is your family and always will be there for you." Kanan's said, blindly putting his hand on the teen's shoulder.

"I'll never forget it Kanan." Riley said to him, and with that, Kanan walked off to the cockpit and Riley headed to his room to catch some rest before they got back to Lothal.

The last time he did this mission, he spent almost a whole day up and didn't want to repeat that.

He walked into his room and laid on his bed, closing his eyes and letting the crashing waves take over his thoughts.

———————————-—————————————————————————————————————————

Riley suddenly jolted awake, realizing someone was trying to wake him.

He rubbed his eyes and looked to see it was Ezra, who was now holding his hand out which Riley took to get him to his feet.

"We're coming up on Lothal and need the coordinates to your old place since we're going to head there first before we drop you off at the data center." Ezra quickly informed him.

"Alright. Give me a second and I'll be out." Riley said groggily as started to gather his gear, to which Ezra nodded and left the room to tell the others.

He grabbed his pistol and holstered it and his miracles and clipped them to his belt.

He stared at his lightsaber that Ezra seemed to not notice on the table, "Not this time. Maybe later I'll show them." He said to himself as he put it in one of the desk drawers.

He had yet to show the crew his new masterpiece and was going to surprise them with it eventually.

He finished gathering the rest of his usual gear, extra ammo, a meditation, and some rations then grabbed his rifle and his helmet and headed out of his room.

He exited the room to see Ezra waiting on him and he waved Riley to follow him as they conversed a little on their way to the cockpit.

"So how come I never met you before on Lothal? I lived there for 14 years and never once saw you." Ezra said to him.

"I didn't live in the city. I lived in a small town outside of the city. I only really came to the city to do jobs or buy stuff." Riley answered him.

"Still, you would think that we would run into each other at least once." Ezra said.

"I guess it just wasn't meant to happen." Riley said.

"That is, until you were trying to steal from us." Ezra said, smiling.

"Hey, it was worth a lot of money. You'd do the same." Riley chuckled.

"I did do the same. That's how the crew found me" Ezra answered.

"Ironic and convenient. Apparently, the easiest way to find a teen boy is to steal crates from the Empire and wait for a teen to try and steal it because it's easier." Riley said, which caused both teens to chuckle right as they got to the cockpit door.

The door opened to the sound of the two teens chuckling which made Hera and Kanan, the only two in the cockpit, turn back to see what the sound was coming from.

When they saw it was the teens, they smiled.

"So, Riley, do you have the coordinates of your home?" Hera asked.

"Yeah, here you go." Riley said as he walked over and punched the coordinates into the nav computer.

"Alright, we're coming up on Lothal." Hera said as they were exiting hyperspace.

"I didn't think I'd be back here for a while." Riley said.

"We seem to always find our way back here no matter what." Kanan said with a chuckle.

"Well, I guess I better get used to seeing it again." Riley said as he watched Hera take the ship down to the surface and to the town.

The ship touched down on the ground with a physical jolt.

The rest of the crew walked into the cockpit.

"Alright, follow me. I'll take you guys to my old home." Riley said as he left the cockpit and slid down the ladder to the bay doors; he was not looking too pleased to be back and the crew noticed that.

They all walked out to see a small town next to a small mountain range.

The town consisted of a few small houses, some apartments, and quite a few businesses both big and small.

There were a few people walking around and quite a few were staring at Riley as he walked with the crew, who were standing close to the teen in case anything broke out.

Riley walked into the town and headed to a small building near the edge of the town and stood at the front door for a second.

"I think it's best if I go in alone and grab the info." Riley said over his shoulder.

He felt a hand on his shoulder.

"You can trust us Riley." Kanan said.

Riley stood still for a second, but finally responded with, "Ok."

He typed in a password on a keypad to the door and the door hissed and slid open.

There was nothing but darkness that they could see as they walked in, their eyes having to adjust to the dark room since it had no lights.

As their eyes adjusted, they saw it was a small two room house with one being a main living room and the other being a bedroom.

Riley walked in and headed immediately into a corner where a small cabinet was at and he opened it'll pull out a small box while the others looked around the teen's apartment.

Riley put the small box in a small backpack on the ground and picked it up and looked at the others, "Well, welcome to my home."

Sabine looked to see a small dining table with two small crates on it, and while Riley was now looking through a dresser for something in the bedroom, she slid the lids off to see the contents of the boxes and was shocked to see what it was: spice and deathsticks.

**And another cliffhanger. The next part will be a Part 2 of this specific part so stay tuned for the explanation.**


	12. Chapter 12: Where The Fun Begins

**Hello and welcome to Chapter 12. I hope you've enjoyed the story so far. I've enjoyed writing it and hope to continue like this for a long time. Please read the bottom text after the story for an important update if you care to. Anyways, enjoy the latest installment in Riley's continued adventure.**

Sabine stared for a second in shock and fear and then whispered to Kanan and Hera, who were just looking around, "Hey, you guys might want to see this."

Hera took a peek inside of the boxes and nearly jumped.

"That's not good." Hera whispered.

"What's not good?" Kanan asked, blindly confused.

"He has a box of deathsticks and spice sitting on the table, and from the look of it, they've been used." Hera told him.

Kanan reacted in shock, knowing what these drugs could do to someone, especially of Riley's age and how addicting they could be.

Zeb was looking around the small room and saw a small couch with some towels and bottles thrown onto it and he picked one of them to see something scary; it was covered in dried up blood.

It gave Zeb a shiver down his spine to see the amount of towels thrown over the couch, not even mentioning the blood stains covering the couch.

He then saw the others staring at some crates on the small table and walked over.

"There's blood-covered towels on the couch. What're you looking at?" He said as he peered over to see the contents and it made him jump again.

Riley finally found what he was looking for: the pile of credits he had stashed away to eventually buy a ship to leave the system.

_Looks like I don't need to save this up anymore. _He thought to himself as he stashed it into his bag.

He opened the drawer underneath and found his old rifle, an A280 modified rifle, of a time when he was a ruthless bounty hunter of times old.

He chuckled at the thought of his old past, took it, and managed to fit it into the bag as well and walked into the main room to see everyone huddled around the table.

"Hey, what's up?" He asked as he was curious to what they were standing around, but when he saw that they were standing in front of some crates, his face went pale under his helmet.

He knew they found his terrible secret.

They turned towards him and saw he was standing in fear of having to explain why he had drugs in his old home.

"This... isn't going to be fun to explain." He said.

"But you're going to have to." Kanan said to him.

Riley took a deep breath and though he was very uncomfortable and wanted to sneak out of this situation, he knew he wasnt going to get a choice.

He took his helmet off and walked over to the table and placed his helmet down on the table.

"It... it was my coping mechanism for a while to deal with the ptsd I had. There's no medication or help out here, so I had to resort to... to that. It's what happens no one cares about you, you don't care about yourself." Riley said, looking to the floor to avoid eye contact.

"I'm not proud of it, but I was in a dark place at the time and it was the only thing that helped me to not lose my mind. If it makes you guys feel any better about it, I've been clean since I met you guys." He told them, shame and fear in his voice.

"And what about the bloody towels on the couch over there?" Zeb asked him.

"I was a bounty hunter. I never said I didn't get hurt or shot. Not all of my scars were from being an Inquisitor. I did jobs that paid well and some of those also happened to be dangerous jobs or testing new drugs. Anything I could do to survive, I did." Riley said, finally having the courage to look up at the group.

They looked at each other for a second, and in that second, Riley thought they were thinking of leaving him and a of cold fear shot down his body.

"Please don't leave me here on my own again. I just found my way and I can't go back down this path again. Everyone else has left me, please don't make me add you guys to that long list." Riley said with tears starting to form in his eyes from the thought of his new family leaving him like everyone else had.

Hera walked over to the broken teen and pulled him into a hug, "We're not going to leave you. You're a part of this family and we're not going to leave you because you had a troubled past." She comforted him.

Everyone else quickly put a hand on his shoulder except for Sabine, who joined in the hug.

"We never leave any of our own behind. We've all made mistakes and done things we shouldn't have done, but we're still family and we know the person you are now." Sabine told him.

Ezra and Kanan could feel the teen's fear through the force and started to send calming waves to the teen.

They could slowly feel the teen's fear melt away and be replaced with relief.

Kanan pulled off his eye cover and looked the teen in the eyes with his clouded eyes.

"Not many people could go through what you went through and still be a good person. Not many people could be as strong as you have been your whole life. We're proud of you Riley, and we aren't ever going to leave you." Kanan said to him.

Riley cracked a small smile, "Thank you."

Hera and Sabine released him from the hug and Hera said to him, "Now straighten up. You have a mission to do." He grabbed his helmet and slipped it back on, "Yes ma'am."

And with that, they walked out of his old home together and headed back towards the Ghost.

Halfway to the ship, they heard someone call out, "Well well, if it isn't Riley."

They turned to see a man leaning against the side of a building.

"Haven't seen you in a while. Thought you died or got captured. Guess you're still too stubborn to disappear for long. See you've got a small posse now," The man said, then looked at Sabine, "And it looks like you finally got a girl."

"What do you want Corbin?" Riley asked with annoyed posture.

"I have more product available and some more experiments to test if you need some extra credits." Corbin offered.

"I'm not in that business anymore Corbin. Now leave me alone." Riley said.

"Come on Riley. I need you to-" was all Corbin got out before Sabine grabbed him and held him at gunpoint.

"He said he isn't in that business anymore. Now leave us alone." She threatened, to which she let go and the man ran off into the alley he was standing in front of.

"What was that all about?" Sabine asked Riley.

"You gotta have a dealer to get drugs. Used to do a lot of business with him." Riley said.

"And you tested some for him?" She asked.

"I did what I had to to survive. Now, let's get back to the ship. I still have my second mission to do." Riley said, avoiding conversation and heading to wards the ship.

As much as Sabine wanted to push, she didn't because she might be able to do that later when they weren't busy with missions.

The rest of crew followed suite without wanting to question the teen and headed again towards the ship.

Just then, Corbin peeked his head around the corner with a com link in hand, "Alert the Boss that he's back."

——————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————

Riley was perched on the same hill as always as he watched the complex for hours just as he'd done many times before waiting for the last worker to leave the comlpex and head for the barracks.

He was starting to hate these missions because he never got any sleep at all and was always half dead when he came back.

Finally, he saw the last worker leave and head to the barracks, and with the pitch black darkness once again, Riley slipped away into the night like a ghost and made his way to the vent as always and snuck into the main data room.

He jumped out of the vent and landed on the floor with a quiet thud and got to work searching for the Imperial fleet movements.

He quickly found the data and copied it to his data pad and jumped back into the vent and quickly made his way back through the vents and out of the facility.

Since he had done this plenty of times, he knew exactly where to go to avoid detection and made his way out of the complex undetected, but this time he remembered to stay off the main road and started towards the pick up point.

On the way though, he saw a sight that he knew was a trap: Corbin was standing in the middle of the road.

Riley immediately said into his comm, "Spectre 7 to Ghost, I'm going to need a pick up at my position. I'm about to run into an old partner and he doesn't look happy."

"Robert that Spectre 7, we're en route." Hera said.

Riley walked out of the tall grass and back onto the road and started to walk towards the man.

"So, looks like we're going to do business again." Corbin said.

"What do you want Corbin? I told you I'm not interested in business anymore." Riley said.

"I thought you would say that." Corbin said as he singled to 8 mercenaries to come out of the tall grass and surround the two.

"The Boss says you're worth a lot of credits to bring back to him." He said.

"And why would that be?" Riley asked.

"When you betray a gang, they never let you forget it. Did you think you were just going to waltz in and out of our land without having to deal with the consequences?" Corbin said.

_I've done it plenty of times before and had no problems so you guys aren't too good at your job. _Riley thought to himself.

"I'm not looking for trouble." Riley said.

"Then you shouldn't have come back." Corbin said as he signaled his mercenaries to move in on Riley.

"You don't want to do this Corbin." Riley said as he slowly moved his left hand to his holster.

"Oh yes I do." Corbin said drawing his blaster.

"So be it." Riley said as he drew his pistol and quickly shot the two closest mercenaries to him.

Corbin was stunned but quickly snapped out of it and shot at Riley, hitting him in the chest.

Riley dodged a couple more shots and took out another merc as he didn't stop moving around to give him a little breathing room.

Corbin managed to zero in on Riley and shot him twice more in the chest, knocking him on his back.

Before Riley could get up, Corbin ran over and put his foot on Riley's chest and held him to the ground while the remaining mercenaries moved to stand next to him.

"Looks like you're joining us for a little chat." Corbin said as he lifted his foot and stomped on Riley's chest.

Riley coughed roughly from the blow but chuckled, " I think our chat is going to have to wait."

Just then, flak explosions happened right behind the huddle and the roar of engines came into their ears.

The explosions flung the huddle of gangsters away from Riley as he stood and made a run for the ship, which had opened it's bay door and had Sabine and Ezra covering his retreat.

Riley got to the door and snarkilly said, "Took you guys long enough," to the pair, which Ezra replied, "Couldn't let you have all the fun", as Riley continued firing at the gangsters.

Right then, Corbin managed to aim his sights right at the back of the teen and fired one more shot before being flung away by more flak explosions.

The round hit Riley's chest again and he dropped to the ground of the bay door hard.

Corbin hit the ground and looked towards the ship to watch it close it's doors and gain altitude fast.

"The Boss won't be pleased about this." He said to himself as he stood slowly and watched the ship fly off into the pitch black sky.

Ezra and Sabine quickly knelt down towards the teen, who's armor was smoking from the amount of rounds he had taken, and pulled his helmet off to check his consciousness.

They pulled it off to see a wincing face before hearing him say, "As much as this armor's supposed to protect me, I sure have to take a lot hits that I feel for a while."

Sabine chuckled in relief and said, "Better to be protected than have it actually puncture you."

"You got that right. Still always ends up leaving a mark no matter what. That's half the reason I'm all banged up under here as it is." He said as he held his hand out to Ezra, who took it and helped pull him to his feet.

"I got the info we needed." He said, handing the data pad to Sabine as she took it and ran off to the cockpit to give it to Hera.

"I'm probably better off not coming back here for a while." Riley said to Ezra.

"Stirring up more trouble I see?" Ezra teased.

"Trouble always seems to find me somehow." Riley said, shrugging.

"Yeah. Tell me about it." Ezra said as they both started walking to the living room.

"I'm surprised she didn't kill me when she saw more scorch marks on her paint." Riley said.

"I guess you got lucky this time with her having to deal with that." Ezra told him.

"Hey, after the briefing, how about we play a game of holochess. Loser cleans the Phantom." Riley said.

"I'm game. Just don't cry when you're cleaning the Phantom and want some help." Ezra teased.

"Oh, so that's how it is huh?" Riley said in a amused sarcastic tone.

"That's exactly how it is." Ezra said, punching Riley's shoulder.

And with that, the two teens went off to the cockpit for the mission debriefing, chuckling while walking side by side like brothers do.

**I hope you guys enjoyed this installment. If you feel like it, please leave a review on how you like it so far so I can know if I'm doing all right at the story telling and what I can improve on. I want to make the best story possible that you guys enjoy. I also want to let you guys know that I am writing a second book for a different project at this time so I might not be able to publish these chapters as much also with school being my biggest priority during this quarantine time. I just wanted to let you guys know in case you begin wondering why I'm not updating as frequently as I used to. Anyways, thank you for reading, I appreciate all of you, and I'll see you in the next one.**


	13. Chapter 13: Free Time

**Welcome to Chapter 13. I tried to do something a little different in this chapter, let me know if you guys like it. Anyways, enjoy.**

Riley was focusing on finishing up performing some basic maintenance on the top of the Ghost for while Ezra was finishing up scrubbing the Phantom.

Of course Ezra lost the game because he didn't plan ahead and Riley caught him slacking.

Riley had taken off his jacket and was only wearing a white tang top to not get his jacket dirty, so some of his scars that he had on his arms were showing.

He was still wearing gloves to protect from possible shocks burning his hands.

He was running the fuel test to see if the line had any leaks.

"Okay Chopper, turn the fuel line on." Riley said into his comm, to which Chopper beeped and turned it on and Riley ran his test; no leaks were found and the fuel level and pressure was normal.

"Alright Chop, you can turn it off." Riley said, which after he spoke the line turned off.

He then did the same with the power cord and put the cords together to test them to.

"Okay Chop, now turn on the power line." Riley said.

The moment the line turned on, sparks immediately shot up at Riley.

"Turn it off Chop, now!" Riley said backing up to avoid electrocuting himself.

The line quickly turned off and the sparks stopped.

"Well, I found the power problem with the Ghost all right." Riley said to himself.

"Looks like you're having fun." Ezra said while throwing a towel over his shoulder and walking over.

"As always." Riley said, checking his hands for burns before grabbing a wrench and using it to recalibrate the power charge.

"Alright Chop, test it again." Riley said, and this time, no sparks came out.

"Alright, power cable's fixed. You can turn it off. We're done." Riley said to which he was given a beep in response as the power turned off.

He closed the panel and sat down on the edge of the Ghost.

Ezra walked over and sat down next to him.

"I still think you cheated." Ezra said.

"How many times do I have to tell you outsmarting you're opponent isn't cheating." Riley chuckled.

"Whatever Riley." Ezra said.

They then sat in silence and looked out at the beautiful sunset that Atollon was known for having.

"You know, this place may be covered in creepy crawlies but it still has it's beauty." Riley said.

"You could say that again." Ezra said.

Another second in silence passed as the they watched the sun finally pass the horizon and all that was left was the remaining orange glow in the sky.

"So, what was the deal with those people attacking you on Lothal?" Ezra asked.

"Well, when I was on my own, I did whatever I could to survive. At one point, that meant joining a gang. That there was them wanting payback for me leaving them. They want me, dead or alive, kind of like the Empire would if they knew I was still alive. It's one of the main reasons I leave no survivors. In a way, I'm a ghost to them and I want to keep it that way." Riley told him.

"Well, we all have things we thought we left behind. Sometimes they come back in the worst of times." Ezra said.

"Sometimes that's just how life is. It'll throw all of its punches at you and it's your job to choose to either take the blow or block it and counter." Riley said.

"Couldn't be better said." Ezra said, smirking.

Riley grabbed some drinks (sodas not beers) he brought up from before he started work and tossed one to Ezra, "Here's to a better future."

"To a better future." Ezra said, clinking the bottles together, taking a sip, and continuing to stare off at what was left of the orange sky turning to a dark purple as light slowly dissipated from the sky and the stars came out, gleaming like many tiny little spotlights in a vast pool of black.

——————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————

Even the next day, Riley decided to try and work on the Ghost some more, seeing if he could upgrade some of the electronics and do some more work on the Phantom to help give its engine a small power boost.

Before he got to work, he had asked Hera to move the Phantom next to the Ghost so he could work on them both without being blocked and left his jacket and gloves since he was going to work on the Phantom's engine.

Riley was able to use some of the electronics he had borrowed from some of the rebel ships that they said were broken beyond repairs and helped upgrade the targeting computer to lock on targets faster and the upgraded the nav computer to make it faster to calculate jumps.

He then started work on the Phantom's engine, relubricating and replacing some of the pistons that had rusted over and hadn't been replaced in a while.

Riley chuckled to himself as he removed the final rusted piston, "I don't want to even know the last time they checked this thing. It must've been before they picked me up because this is pretty messy."

He continued his work, carefully lubricating and installing the last piston and stepping back to admire his work.

"Only one way to know if it works." Riley said as he walked into the Phantom and attempted to turn it on.

Not to Riley's surprise, the ship turned on and ran perfectly and he got to sit for a second in the pilot chair and admire his work.

Riley went and grabbed a towel and began to wipe his hands off as he headed into the Ghost.

He walked in and climbed the ladder and headed to the cockpit.

The door slid open and he walked in to see Hera sitting at the pilot seat and sat next to her in the copilot seat.

"I did some basic maintenance on both ships, upgraded and repaired some of the electrical systems, upgraded both the targeting and nav computer, and replaced the rusted pistons on the Phantom, which on its own was a pretty big mess to have to deal with." Riley told her as he finished wiping his hands and slung the blackened, smuggled towel over his shoulder.

Hera turned to him to say, "Good job," but before the words came out, she saw the scars on the teen's arms that were visible and internally shivered but externally had a look of sadness in her face.

Riley was confused, thinking he had possibly ripped his shirt, but he realized what she was looking at when he looked at his arms.

"I'm sorry. I'll cover them up." Riley said as started to stand, but was quickly met by Hera's hand guiding him back to his seat.

"It's fine. I just managed to forget about them." She told him.

A lot of the time, the crew had forgotten where he had came from until things like this popped up and made them realize how strong Riley really was.

"I'd love to be able to forget them, forget what some of them stand for, but I can't. I'm just glad to not get any more like them." Riley told her, looking down at his arms, studying his scars once more.

Some dark memories flashed through his mind as he studied them, seeing the exact moment he was given them.

He jolted when Hera put her hand on his shoulder, breaking him out of his trance.

"We're all proud of you Riley. We're proud of the man you've become." Hera told him in a soft tone.

"Thank you Hera." Riley said, smiling.

It's all he really wanted to hear, that he made a parent-like figure tell them they were proud of him, and internally it made his soul light up.

"Come on," She said to him as she stood up from her chair, "Let's go see what the others are up to."

Riley stood up and followed Hera as they walked out of the cockpit and into the living room where Ezra was talking to Kanan about the lesson they just went over, Zeb was eating, Chopper was being Chopper, and Sabine was watching the HoloNet.

Every time he saw the whole crew together in the same room, he couldn't help but smile and think that he finally found a family, albeit dysfunctional sometimes, but family none the less.

He then thought the same thing he thought every time he saw them together: he would never let anyone hurt or take this family away from him, even if it meant giving his life.

It was still a new feeling to Riley; he had never had anyone he cared for enough that he would die for them because for most of his life he had no one, but niw that he did and he knew this feeling, he would never let anyone take it from him.

**I hope you guys enjoyed this chapter. I'll be back with another soon. By the way, since I'm releasing this today, Happy Mother's Day to you guys. They are some of the most important people in our lives and they never get enough appreciation from us. Anyways, I'll see you guys in the next one. **


	14. Chapter 14: No Mistakes

**Hey guys. I've been busy continuing to write this story, and am trying to plan ahead a little better to make the story flow better, so I'm also spacing out when I release chapters. I'm trying to make chapters connect better so that's why new chapters aren't being released everyday. Anyways, I hope you enjoy the story so far and I hope you continue to enjoy!**

Riley was hanging out at the shooting range they had on Atollon, testing his old A280 against his Valken 39x to see which one would be better to use and to relax while away from the rest of the crew since it was always something he enjoyed to do.

He loaded his A280 with a 10 shot charge and fired it down range: it had a hard kick but was deadly accurate for long distance sniping.

He then did the same with his Valken 39x and noticed it had less recoil and was easier to fire more rapidly but it wasn't as accurate or as powerful as the A280 over longer ranges.

He personally liked the Valken more because he had worked so hard on maintaining and upgrading it, so he decided to make it his true primary while he used his old A280 on long distance sniping missions and to fiddle with and upgrade if he had the time.

As he was packing up his A280 into its compact version, he heard somebody walk up behind him

"So, what'cha up to?" The voice, which was Sabine's, asked him.

"Nothing, just making a decision on which I liked better." Riley said, turning around to see her.

She didn't have her helmet guarding her face so he studied her face for a moment and and chuckled in his mind; he seemed to be the only one that Sabine ever smiled towards on a regular basis unless it was Ezra making a fool of himself, which he did pretty often.

"Care if I give them a shot?" Sabine asked him, staring at the rifle in his hands.

"Go ahead." Riley said, loading a charge pack into the Valken and handed it to her to try out downrange while he reset the A280 to its sniper version.

He watched her fire the whole pack downrange at the target, not managing to miss a single shot.

"Never miss a shot huh?" Riley said as he traded rifles with Sabine.

"Are you truly a Mandolorian if you miss?" Sabine chuckled out.

"Good point." Riley commented with a slight chuckle as he watched her fire the first shot of the A280 and stumbled back a little, not ready for the recoil of the rifle and landing in Riley's arms as he caught her stumble.

"Okay, this thing kicks." Sabine said, straightening up and laying it down on the table.

She turned to see Riley trying really hard not to burst out laughing at the scene.

She punched him hard in the shoulder, which seemed to release the pressure of the laughter out into the atmosphere.

Sabine cocked her fist back threatening to punch him again, but she couldn't fight off the growing smile on her face as Riley raised one of his hands in defense while calming down from his laughing fit.

"On the serious note, that's why I'm not using that one as much. Eventually I'll tinker with it and maybe reduce the recoil." Riley said between small giggles.

Sabine stares at him with a "Really?" sarcastic stare.

"You said you wanted to try it. I merely abliged." Riley said holding his hands up in defense while still smiling.

Sabine finally released her punch and slammed Riley in the chest this time, taking him by surprise for a second, feeling the sore pain from the kick that was dealt to his chest by Corbin a while ago which, for some odd reason, flashed some memories into his mind for a moment, leaving him staring off into oblivion as he rewatched some of the jobs he pulled to stay alive back when he was stuck on Lothal which now felt so long ago: pickpocketing, simple thieving, stick ups, even some drug deals he helped Corbin conduct for a small amount of product as payment for his services.

His smile quickly faded and left him blankly staring off as they finished flashing by his mind.

He suddenly felt someone shake him a little and snapped out of his trance and looked down to see Sabine say to him, "You good? I didn't meant to punch you that hard."

"No, it's fine. For some reason, it brought back some memories." Riley said as he put his hand over the now sore area.

"Are you sure you're good? People don't usually do that if they're fine." Sabine said, a little playful concern in her voice and posture.

"Yeah, I'm good. Come on, let's head back to the Ghost, they're probably waiting on us again." Riley said to her as he picked his rifles and started to walk towards the Ghost with Sabine keeping pace next to him.

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Riley sat on his bed in his room staring at the crude hilt of his lightsaber sitting in his palm, studying its construction with both pride and fear as he imagined himself wielding it and fighting off hordes of stormtroopers with the crew, letting his still child-like imagination take him over for a second before snapping back to reality.

He had still not told anybody that he had finished it enough to wield it for now and questioned himself if he really was responsible enough to wield it.

He still remembered the last time he wielded a lightsaber: he was a monstrous being that seemed as if he wasn't even human, slaughtering anyone who stood in its path on a journey for power, but it never came to him.

His biggest fear now was that if he used it again, he would forget what side he was, become the monster he was before, and even cause harm to his family, which is something he couldn't bear to do.

"I don't think I'm ready just yet." He said to himself sadly as he made his final decision on if he would show them and bring it along on this mission.

"Ready for what?" Kanan said to Riley, startling the teen and nearly making him fall out of his bed as he hid his lightsaber behind himself in reflex before quickly remembering he was blind and looked to see him standing in the doorway of his room.

"Uh, Kanan, I didn't hear you come in. It's nothing. Just thinking to myself about some stuff from a while back." Riley told him, which was true but not the full truth.

Kanan knew he wasn't telling the full truth and knew there was something more to his reaction, but he didn't mention it and let it slide for now; he could mention it later after the mission.

"We've got another mission briefing starting soon." He told Riley.

"Alright. I'll be out in a second." Riley said, receiving a nod from the wise master and watched as he stepped back and walked down the hall to tell the others wherever they were on base as the door hissed silently and slid shut, leaving Riley alone in his room once again.

"That was way too close." He said to himself as he stood and started to prep his gear for the mission ahead.

He stared at the lightsaber in his hand before storing it in his desk drawer and grabbed his gear: his rifle, pistol, miracles, charge packs, and finally some rations.

_I'll bring it out one day when I'm ready. _Riley thought to himself as he loaded a full charge into his Valken rifle before mounting it on his back.

Once he packed everything away, he grabbed his helmet and held it by his side as he headed out of his room and to the cockpit to the briefing.

The door slid open and only Hera was sitting in the pilot's seat with Chopper at the plugin.

He walked in and waited for the rest of them to come in.

It was a funny feeling for him; he was never usually one of the first ones to a briefing.

After a moment, the rest of the crew showed up and they began the briefing.

"Alright, we're infiltrating another Imperial data center for information on some of the new Tie Defender designs." Hera said.

"You sure we can't have someone sneak in and steal the data like I've done before?" Riley asked her.

"No. This one is too well guarded and security is too tight for us to risk sending only one person in. It has couple buildings surrounded by walls with multiple sniper towers. At the outside of the base, there is a landing pad where we are going to land to start the attack." Hera responded, turning on and showing the crew a hologram of the data center's defenses.

"When we land, we'll need to split up into 2 teams: Ezra, me, and Zeb will be on the ground pushing through the base while Riley and Sabine cover us from above and take out all of the snipers. We'll hack the door controls and make our way to the main data storage building." Kanan said.

"Gotta let the best marksmen do their job." Riley commented as he looked towards Sabine and formed his lips into a cocky smile which she returned.

"Once we get inside the building, you won't be able to cover us, so you'll come down and position yourselves at the door we came in and cover us as we come out and make our way to you. We will finally pull back as a group to the Ghost and get out of there before reinforcements arrive." Kanan finished.

"Sounds easy enough." Zeb said.

"Let's hope so." Kanan said.

——————————————————————

"5 seconds!" Hera yelled through the comm as the cargo bay filled with the rest of the crew started to shake and rumble.

Suddenly, the door opened and the crew ran out into the light to see smoke and smouldering remains of the wall surrounding the base that Hera had bombarded from the air before landing and letting the ground crew do the rest.

Once they had made their way through the walls, Sabine and Riley quickly split from the main group and headed for one of the towers next to a building that they could snipe from and cover the rest of the crew from the mass of stormtroopers in between them and the main data storage building.

The two quickly climbed up to the top of the tower using the ladder next to it and took position at the top by kneeling and resting their weapons on the railing of the tower and proceeded to fire down upon the squad of 10 stormtroopers that were now attacking the other group, surprising them by attacking them from above and in front and causing them to scatter and spread out.

Together, the crew took out the whole squad of troopers in between the ground crew and the building with ease.

Soon after, the 3 man group pushed up and into the small building to where the two couldn't cover them anymore.

"Alright, time to move back down." Sabine said.

Riley made a joking motion as he moved from his kneeling position into a standing position and, "Ladies first."

Sabine walked by, punching his shoulder, and started down the ladder and Riley followed suite.

They soon reached ground level and found a spot, a couple of crates they could hide behind and use as cover so they could cover the rest of the crew on their retreat while not completely exposing themselves.

"This has gone pretty well. Maybe this wasn't such a hard mission after all." Riley said arrogantly.

Right after he said that, he watched as two doors opened near the building and two huge clumps of stormtroopers came running out towards the building their friends were in.

"You had to say something." Sabine said with annoyance in her voice.

"Well, I didn't know." Riley said defensively as he put his sights on the the closest trooper and pulled the trigger, watching his body drop lifelessly to the ground.

The rest of the troopers started to run towards cover and fire towards the two teens as they worked to try and thin them out before their friends left the building.

They started working through the troopers while using the cover they had, quickly dropping their numbers from 20 down to 12 as their friends bolted out of the building and were in a full on sprint towards the teens.

Riley and Sabine continued to lay down cover fire as their friends finally made their way to the crates the teens were hiding behind.

"Did you get the info we needed?" Sabine asked as she pulled her body behind cover as a shot whizzed past where her head was poking out.

"Yeah. And we better move if we don't want to blow up like the rest of this garrison." Kanan said as he poked out and fired a couple blind shots.

"Specter 1 to Spectre 2, we've got the info and are pulling back to the Ghost. We'll need some suppressing fire to cover our retreat." Kanan said into his comm.

"On it." He heard Hera respond as they heard a couple of explosions near them and watched some stormtroopers fly through the sky before smashing into the ground.

"Time to move." Kanan said as the crew moved out from cover and fired back as they ran back towards the Ghost.

Riley, Sabine, and Zeb found cover real quick and suppressed the troopers, allowing the rest of them as they made their way to the Ghost, firing back at the growing amount of stormtroopers moving in on them.

Suddenly, time slowed for Riley as he watched a stormtrooper throw a detonator towards Sabine, who froze in fear at the sight of it rolling to her feet.

Riley knew what he had to do; he ran over and pushed Sabine away from the detonator, saving her from the explosion, but right as he turned to run and get out of the blast radius, a stormtrooper finally managed to hit him just below the bescar back plate with a shot, shooting pain through his body and stopping his retreat and causing him to start falling to the ground, but he couldn't even touch his knees down before being flung through the air by the explosion.

He blacked out before he even hit the ground.

Sabine stared in horror as she watched Riley hit the ground hard on his back, smoke coming off the bescar and from the hole to the left of his abdomen as a pool of blood almost immediately formed around his body.

She ran to his seemingly lifeless body and pulled him behind some crates, leaving a trail of blood behind.

She studied his body, his clothes underneath ripped and torn from the explosion, the hole from the blaster bolt, the shards of steaming shrapnel that she could see protruding from his skin as well as the burned and torn up flesh visible through the rips in his clothes.

She pulled his helmet off to see if he was conscious, but his eyes were shut and his body showed no signs of consciousness.

She quickly checked his pulse; she felt it, though very weak, relieving her a little as she quickly tried to patch the bleeding hole in his stomach to temporarily stop the bleeding from the only hole she could patch up with the equipment she had on her while doing her best to not freak out at the sight of her savior and friend badly injured.

Zeb managed to make his way over to the two and yelled to Sabine, "You cover me, I'll carry him."

She nodded, drawing her pistols and laying fire down as Zeb did his best to carefully pick up the unconscious teen without causing more pain or damage before the two retreated back to the Ghost with Sabine making sure to lob a few miracles into the clumps of troopers for good measure.

They made it quickly onto the Ghost, immediately rushing Riley into the medical room on the Ghost as Hera took off and immediately left the system, but not before feeling the rumble of the explosion of the data center.

The moment after she made the jump into hyperspace, she rushed down to the medical room and started to order people out of the room except for Zeb, who was to help her.

While the others didn't want to leave his side, they headed to their rooms to leave the two alone while they worked.

Sabine went into her room and stared down at her gloves, stained with the blood of her friend, her friend who took a grenade and a blaster bolt for her, and almost immediately broke down in a crying fit, felling completely and utterly responsible for her friends compromised condition.

Ezra sat on his bunk and thought about his friend, fearing the worst but holding onto hope that Riley could make it through.

He knew Riley had been through similar situations like this before; Riley had told him about some of the things he went through as an Inquisitor because he knew he could trust Ezra not to tell everyone, a lot of it being very gruesome injuries similar to this, so he kept his hopes up and knew to trust his friend to make his way out.

Kanan sat on his floor and meditated, trying to use the force to try and see if Riley's signature was still there, at first not seeing it, but then felt it flowing weakly up and down like a wave.

He did everything to try and comfort the teen as it was the only way Kanan could really help the teen, receiving spikes in his signature when he did and heard him say, "Keep me away from explosives from now on," through the connection of the force between the three Jedi.

Kanan smiled through his meditation as well as Ezra on his bunk; they knew Riley was going to make it.

Hera and Zeb continued to work, quickly hooking Riley up to the life support system and patched the hole in his stomach with some bandages and Bacta that would hold for now, but there were plenty of other wounds and burns all over from the explosion like shrapnel on his legs, arms, and even his stomach where the bescar couldn't protect him that were harder to treat and they would need to rush back to base and get him in the infirmary quickly.

They did their best to stabilize him enough to be moved into the base and taken care of and contacted the base to let them know what happened and to be ready to take him once they had landed.

The moment that they landed, they rushed some paramedics into the ship and carried him out on a stretcher and into the infirmary building with the crew by his side the whole time.

They soon rushed him into an operating room and told the crew to wait in the waiting room and let them do their job.

Though the crew didn't want to leave Riley's side, they knew it was best to let the medics do their magic.

They sat in the waiting room for hours, filling the room with silence and nervous energy for their friend, the only people who had left the room were Kanan and Hera to hand the information off to Rebel command and quickly returned to the room to continue to wait.

Sabine had been sitting with Ezra, looking like she was about to cry the whole time and feeling absolutely terrible for allowing this to happen.

Ezra had done his best to comfort her, but it wasn't enough and she started crying hysterically.

Hera walked over and sat next to Sabine, doing what Ezra could not.

"Why couldn't I just throw it away?" She cried as Hera pulled her into a hug, letting the teen release to someone.

"It wasn't your fault Sabine." Hera said, doing her best to comfort her.

"But it is. If I reacted faster, he would be fine. He wouldn't be in there if it weren't for me." Sabine continued to cry.

"He did that for you Sabine. It's hard to deal with, but he did that so you wouldn't be in there. Besides, it's Riley. We know he'll be alright." Hera said to her, hoping that last part would be true.

She continued to comfort the broken teen until she fell asleep, allowing her to lay over chairs next to her.

After even more time, most of the rest of the crew had drifted off into sleep from exhaustion, laying over multiple chairs with their heads on pillows and covered in blankets that the staff of the infirmary had provided for their stay, the only ones still awake being Hera and Kanan, hoping to be able to wake the rest of the crew when they were allowed to see him.

Kanan said playing with his beard as he slouched over with his eyes closed while Hera sat next to him staring down at a data pad.

"He'll be alright Kanan." Hera said, which suprised Kanan from the sudden sound interrupting the silence.

"I know. I just hope there won't be any repercussions from this." Kanan's told her.

"He's a tough kid, he'll make it through whatever happens. From what I can tell, he's done it before." She told him, which made Kanan give a concerned look on his face.

"What do you mean by that?" Kanan asked her.

"If only you could see the scars on that kid's body. He's completely littered in them all over the place. It's not the prettiest sight to see. It doesn't look like this is the first time something like this has happened to him." Hera told him.

"He did say he the Empire engineered him through pain; I can only imagine what he meant by that. I can't even imagine dealing with the things he has on his own with no one to help him through it." Kanan said.

"The difference this time is he has people who actually care for him to be around when he wakes up." Hera said, smiling for the first time since before the mission.

"Yes he does." Kanan said, wrapping his arm around her and pulling her to him.

They continued to wait until they both finally dozed off, leaning against each other as support as the darkness consumed them both in peace.

**And that'll do it for this one. I'm making multiple chapters at a time to allow them to flow better into each other as I said already and am working on another project for myself as well as planning another Star Wars story kind of similar to this, so forgive me if the uploads slow down a little. I won't be stopping uploads, but they may not be as frequent as they have been. It may not change at all, but I'm warning you guys just in case so you don't worry. I hope you guys enjoy the rest of your day and I'll see you in the next one.**


	15. Chapter 15: Recovery

Hera suddenly woke with a jolt; someone had been shaking her to wake her.

She slowly rubbed and opened her eyes and adjusted to the light for a second before she saw someone standing in front of her; it was a doctor, one of the doctors that had helped them take Riley into the operating room.

"Hello, I am Doctor Darren Asher. I'm here to inform you of how your friend is." The doctor said to her

She suddenly was flooded with energy and adrenaline and stood up, quickly asking the doctor, "How is he?"

"13 hours of surgery to remove all the shrapnel from his body and patch up his skin as well as treating his blaster wound, but he'll live. We've stabilized him and he'll need a lot of rest as well as regular dips in a bacta tank for a while, but he'll be alright." The doctor told her, sleepily smiling towards her.

"Will there be any foreseeable repercussions from this?" She asked in worry.

"I won't be able to truly know until we get him to move around a little and he will go through therapy to help retrain his body functions he might struggle with for a bit, but nothing I can tell that would be a long term problem." He said to her.

She felt relief flush over her, "May we see him?"

"Yes ma'am, though please tell your friend s to try not to wake him, he's on some medication and he'll be out for the day. He might wake tomorrow but I won't make any promises. I'll wait for you to wake your friends." The doctor told her, stepping to the side to allow her to get past and wake the rest of the crew.

She shook Kanan lightly to wake him, to which he responded sleepily, "Hm? What's going on?"

"They're done working on Riley. We're allowed to see him." She told him, which snapped Kanan up.

"Help me wake the others so we can go." She told him.

She went to wake Sabine while Kanan had to wake Zeb.

She shook Sabine, who slowly sat up and asked her, "What's up?"

"They're done treating Riley, we can see him now." Hera told her, which caused her to react the same way Kanan did, but she immediately asked Hera fearfully, "Is he going to be alright?"

Hera smiled, "He'll be alright. The doctor told me he doesn't foresee any long term issues from this."

Sabine sighed in relief, feeling thankful her poor reaction didn't cost Riley much.

"He will have to go through therapy for a while, but he should be fine after that." Hera informed her.

"That's good news." Sabine said.

"If you would please follow me, I'll lead you to his room." The doctor announced to the crew, who immediately followed him to the room.

As they stood outside the door, the doctor informed them, "Please, don't try to wake him. He is on some medication to allow him to rest for the day. You don't have to worry about keeping quiet, just don't expect him to wake. After today, it will be on his own time on when he will wake, and if you aren't in the room when he does, we will alert you the moment he does." The doctor informed them.

"Thank you for everything Dr. Asher." Hera said to him.

"It is my pleasure." The doctor told her as he opened the door for the crew to walk in, to which they quickly filed through the door.

They stared at the sight of their friend: he was laying on the bed with his legs covered by a blanket, he wasn't wearing a top because they had to patch up the hole in his stomach, there were plenty of small stitches and bacta patches all over his his arms and some on his chest from them having to remove and patch up the wounds the shrapnel created and the burns from the hot metal and the explosion itself.

The crew pulled up some chairs and sat next to the bed, the two teens sitting the closest to their friends face.

Sabine smiled while looking down at him, happy that he would be fine after this and finding it funny that his face looked so peaceful as he sleeped.

The crew sat next to him for hours, chatting about things, missions and stuff going on around the base like how Chopper dropped a tower of ration crates on top of AP-5 and just laughing at him as he begged for help before being helped out by some technicians.

They did whatever they could to kill time while they waited for their crewmate, even though they knew he wouldn't wake for the first day.

The next day, most of the crew had to go tend to their base duties, but they left the teens with Riley and told them they would take care of their jobs; they knew the kind of relationship the teens had with Riley and wanted them to be there when he woke up.

They sat there in silence for hours, waiting for their friend to finally wake up.

The doctor had walked in earlier and ran some tests on him and told the pair that he was off the medication and could wake at any time.

Eventually, Ezra had to get up and use the refresher; he had been waiting since they first got up in the room and wasn't going to go until he had seen Riley awake, but he couldn't hold it anymore and had to go, leaving Sabine alone with Riley still unconscious.

Sabine sat and stared at her sleeping friend, taking time to study the scars littering the teens body.

She saw some small patches that looked similar to cigar burns, some larger scar that looked like burns from being out directly onto a fire, some that looked like some blaster wounds, some that looked similar to lightsaber cuts, but then she saw one that made her heart sink: it was a scar made from a scalpel or knife, spelling out the word _MINE _on his upper bicep.

She didn't even want to imagine the monster that had carved that into her friend's arm, nor the pain it caused Riley to go through, which was always a thing she questioned herself on every time she saw him.

She never could understand how a tortured, scarred, and broken teenager like him could still be so kind, caring, and find humor even in some of the darkest of situations.

It made her put her head down and think of the person Riley could've become if he hadn't been put through the torture of being an Inquisitoror if he had grown up with his parents, or even if the crew had found him sooner.

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Riley had been staring out at the flowing waves for what felt like days, trying to figure out why he was here and if it was a vision or just another dream.

He continued to sit there before he saw something appear out of thin air, it was Master Yoda once again.

"Hello child." The wise old master said to Riley.

"Hello Master. What are you doing here?" Riley asked him.

"Here, I am, to tell you where to find this place is." Yoda said to him, motioning his hand to the beach around him.

"I'm not sure I fully understand. Do you mean that this place does actually exist outside of my head?" Riley asked.

"Yes, and finally time for you to reunite with this place, it is." Yoda told the teen.

"What will await me there?" Riley asked him.

"For you to find out, that is." The Master said to the teen, "To Rotomin, you must head, and answer many of your question, you will."

And with that, Master Yoda dissipated and felt the tingling sensation of his body starting to wake up.

He felt fuzzy and light like a cloud and still sludgy and groggy at the same time.

His eyes cracked open, only letting in bright light and blurry images around him, but his body also started to feel pain.

He quickly remembered he used to wake up this way all the time a long while back; it happened this way after any heaven training or torture session from back when he was an Inquisitor.

_No. Not again. _Riley thought in panicked fear.

With a sudden reaction in his fear, he jerked up into a sitting position as if out of a bad dream and immediately regretting it, feeling his gut and body light up in firey pain and pulled his arm to where the former hole in gut was and where the pain radiated from the most.

The sudden movement startled Sabine, making her jump, but when she saw the wincing face from the pain her friend was in, she shook out of her startled gaze and helped him lay back down on the bed.

"It's okay, you're safe." She said softly into his ear, which seemed to calm him down a little and helped him relax as his breathing slowed back to normal as he layed his head back down on the pillow.

Riley finally opened his eyes and his vision cleared up and he saw Sabine staring down at him.

"S-Sabine?" Riley asked weakly.

"Yes Riley, I'm here." She said to him softly while smiling.

"Wha… what happened? Where am I?" Riley asked her while glaring around the sterile, white room.

"You're back on Atollon in the medical bay. You're here because… because you took a grenade for me." She said, looking away in shame as she thought about the moment and blamed her terrible reactions for his injuries.

Riley stopped staring at the walls for and looked down at his arms, seeing the patches and stitches as well as the old scars littering his arms and then at his chest with the patched up area to the left of his abs, which were littered in stitches and patches all over.

Riley's heart started beating a little faster at the sight, and Sabine could see Riley's shock in his eyes.

"Are you alright?" He asked her, surprising her as she didn't think he would ask her if she was ok.

"Uh, yes thanks to you." She said, her smiling fading and looking away from him.

She felt terrible for letting this happen, for letting Riley get hurt so bad.

Suddenly, she felt something placed upon her hand, and when she looked at it, she saw it was Riley's hand.

"Don't blame yourself for this. I made my choice and regret nothing. I would never let any of you get hurt, and if it means I have to sacrifice myself like I did, so be it." He told her.

"It's just… I…" She started before Riley wrapped his fingers around her hand and pulled it to his chest.

"I don't want never will blame you for this." He told her, smiling.

"I'm glad you're going to be ok." Sabine said, her smile returning.

"I'm still here aren't I? The Empire's been trying to kill me for 16 plus years and haven't succeeded." He said to her, which got out a light chuckle and livened up the room a little.

"Even near death you can't help but crack a joke can you?" She said, shaking her head.

"Hey, I do what I do best." Riley chuckled.

Just then, the door to the room opened and Ezra walked in, "So, how much longer is he gonna sleep for?"

"Until you leave the room." Riley snarled, causing Ezra to jerk in shock before running to the side of his bed.

"You're finally up?" Ezra asked.

"Would I be talking to you if I wasn't?" Riley said.

Ezra chuckled, "It's good to see you Riley."

"It's good to see you to." Riley said as the two shook hands, the three teens filling the room with joy as Riley had come back to them.

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It had been a couple days since Riley first awoke, and he was already making good progress in his recovery.

He now was able to sit up with less pain in his bed and was able to be moved to a bacta tank and back via wheelchair, which was pushed by one of the crew every time so they could spend time with him.

He was very happy to have people who cared for him during his weakest and most vulnerable time.

Right now, he was soaking in a bacta tank, it being the only place he didn't feel constant pain.

As he was floating peacefully in the gelatinous fluid that caused his body to constantly tingle, he kept his mind focused on what Master Yoda had told him while he was asleep a few days before.

He had not told any of the crew of what he was told, mostly because he still didn't fully understand it himself just yet.

He knew the name of the planet, but he still didn't know how or why it was familiar to him.

He didn't know why Yoda had told him to go there, but he learned to never question the former Grand Master because everything he told you to do became a lesson he was trying to teach you.

Still, that didn't mean everything he said made sense right away, but Riley decided that if Master Yoda told him to find this place, wherever it is, he would follow his orders, that is, once he was able to walk again.

The explosion had burned and tore up his skin and muscles , making it very painful to move his legs too much, let alone stand on them.

This was going to be his biggest struggle to overcome from this accident, but unlike every other time he had to recover from something like this, he had a family who cared for him and wouldn't leave his side.

He couldn't think of a moment during his recovery process where he was alone with no one to talk to, that is, unless he was in the refresher, which thank the Force no one was in there with him.

It hasn't been the greatest experience for him, but he was glad he had let himself take the pain instead of letting Sabine have it and he knew he would make it through just fine with everyone around him.

Sabine stood there, leaning against the wall as she stared at her friend who had risked his life for her, floating peacefully in his bacta tank, wearing nothing but boxers and a mask to breathe and showing all of his wounds from the blaster and shrapnel along with his already scar-littered skin and thought about how peaceful Riley looked.

Though she still felt awful for letting this happen to him, she was still glad to see him alive and getting better.

Just then, she heard a beep and watched as she watched Riley react to the sound and opened his eyes as he was being pulled up to the top of the tank into the room above them.

After a minute, the same doctor who had treated Riley walked through the door with Riley being pushed in his wheelchair.

"You know, I'll never get used to the feeling of those tanks give me." Riley said as he was pushed to Sabine.

Sabine shook her head while smiling, "Only you or Ezra could make jokes about your recovery."

"Hey, I'm going to be like this for a while. Might as well be able to have fun with it." Riley said as Sabine walked behind him to take the wheelchair from the doctor.

She had spent the most time with Riley with Ezra being a close second since the adults knew the bond the three had since they were of a similar age.

She started to push Riley out of the room, "So, you hungry?"

"I'm starving." Riley said, rubbing his stomach where there weren't any wounds.

"Well, let's head to the mess hall." Sabine said to him, directing them to the mess.

"Finally, something I can taste other than pure nutrients through a straw." Riley said, feeling his stomach rumbling.

He had been fed through a tube for a while to make sure he was able to digest food before he he was allowed to eat solid food, and the doctors finally agreed that he could try solid food today.

He also hadn't been allowed outside of the medical bay because the doctors wanted to keep close tabs on him, but they decided that they could let Riley move around the base a little but he still had to spend most of his time in the medical bay, which he agreed with them.

He hadn't talked to or seen anybody outside of the Ghost crew, the doctors, or the medical droids since the injury so it would be interesting to see how people would treat him after it.

As the two headed up to the door leading to the mess hall and watched it hiss and slide open, he saw everyone turn towards the door and look towards him for a second as the chatter that once filled the room left and silence took its place.

After a second, everyone in the hall stood to their feet and started clapping and hooting, surprising Riley as he didn't expect this.

He looked up towards Sabine in confusion, to which she looked down at him with a smile and started laughing when she saw Riley's confused expression, "They wanted to surprise you."

"Well, they did a very good job." Riley said with a chuckle, looking back towards the mess as Sabine started to push him again into the room.

He watched as he passed a few tables, beaming when he saw where they were headed: a table covered in food with the rest of the Ghost crew waiting for him there.

"Since you were now allowed to eat real food again, we wanted to make it memorable for you." Sabine said to him as she pushed him into place in front of the table.

"Welcome back to the Rebellion." Hera said to him, giving her newest child a half hug.

_So this is what family is like. _Riley thought to himself as they set a plate of space waffles in front of him.

He smiled to the crew before he began to do g in, filling his stomach with real food surrounded by his friends and family for the first time in a long time.

**I hope you guys enjoyed this chapter. Sorry it took me so long to post it. I was busy working on my second book, Death From Above, an Ace Combat 7 book. Also, I have to say I'm so glad because a couple days ago, this story reached 2,000 views. I never thought this book would ever do this well. I appreciate your guys wait and I hope to be back with another chapter soon.**


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